The Honeymoon is Over: Parts I & II

"We have to kill him," Daniel said.

The coldness of his delivery scared Elizabeth more than the prospect itself, which was terrifying enough. There they sat in the grandeur that fell to them like crumbs from the table of Alexander Thanus, amid a pink and frilly splendor that had become theirs through the recent marriage of their mother, not even a month hence, and Daniel starts out their secret family meeting with that doozy. Just over three weeks home from the indeterminately long European honeymoon cut inexplicably to five short days, and Daniel wants no truck with seeking help, or talking things through; no police, no counselors, nothing... from zero to murder in two seconds flat. Granted, he had taken the brunt of the beatings last time... almost as much as Mom had, but still... Murder? "You're out of your mind," she snapped.

"Maybe, but I won't go through this again. I'm not a helpless kid anymore. I won't sit back watching while he continues to hurt her, doing nothing, but wait for him to start hurting me, or you, or the girls." The girls was the standard designation for the youngest two together, a single congealed blob of personhood designated by nothing more than the vague undeveloped femininity of it. "We'll make it look like an accident," he said smirking, but his habit of rubbing the scar that split his left eyebrow like a forest roadway belied his otherwise confident pose. Extreme stress and uncertainty always sent his hand to it, stroking over it as if he could coax the hair there to close up again.

At her core, that part of her that reacted from hard-learned impulse alone, Elizabeth agreed. She didn't want to live through this kind of hell again either, but said, "We'll never get away with it, not with CSI teams around. Have you ever seen one show where the killer gets away with it? A hair, a partial print, a chemical trace, a miscalculation in trajectory on our part, and BAM!!! They've got us."

"CSI teams? Really? In Easton? I'm not sure the cops here even own a magnifying glass. But don't worry, if the cops figure out it wasn't an accident, I'll confess to the whole thing. I'm young enough to have my record sealed after a couple years of Juvie, but only if we act soon, before I turn 16. Nobody's going to try to pin anything on little girls, when some guy is taking all the blame. They won't look beyond the obvious; they're just not that motivated, and you know it. When did they ever expend any effort for us?"

"I'm not a little girl," Elizabeth whisper-screeched, "I'm only 10 months younger than you."

"I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about them," Daniel deflected, jerking his thumb at Allison and Little Debbie who were sitting wide-eyed on Allison's new double canopy bed amid a host of stuffed animals and dolls that Alex had waiting for them when they moved in the week before the wedding. Little Debbie was inadvertently choking the life out of a Rottweiler-sized hippo at that very moment, one, Christophe. "And if they don't figure it out, then, we're home free. We'll be rid of that two-faced, wife beating bastard... don't ever let me hear you girls using that word... and it'll be just us again, like it should be, but better. We'll have the house and stuff... and he's got to have insurance too; corporate fat cats always have insurance."

Elizabeth, chortled. “Fat cats? Really?”

“What?! That’s what they’re called!” Daniel said.

Alexander owned a chain of upscale men's clothing stores and did a bit better than well for himself if the house, grounds, two Lexuses and one super loaded Escalade were any measure. He called the stores Antipas, as if he was proud of his bizarre middle name.

Little Debbie spoke up. They always called her Little Debbie when they weren't angry with her... after the snack cakes their mother used to buy. Half the price and almost as good, they often chimed afterward just to provoke her. She said, "Why don't we just get Mom to run away with us... back to our old place? Maybe they haven't rented it yet."

If the truth be told, Little Debbie didn't want to go anywhere. A little shouting wasn't too bad, if she got her own bed, and they didn't know for sure that Alex was hitting her. He'd never laid a finger on any of them, and they'd both said that the injuries that brought them back early from the honeymoon were from a moped accident in Italy. And Debbie had her own bed, for goodness sake.

Being eight, Little Debbie was not yet wise to the ways of the world, so it fell wearily to Dan, Elizabeth, and, sometimes, 11 year old Allison, to explain these things.

Allison said, "He's got all the money now that Mom quit her job to move out here, and we sold the car already. We'd have to steal one of his, and, then, they'd put Mom in jail."

Unfortunately, even at eleven, death and murder were not a reality to Allison, either. She knew what the words meant, she’d seen enough TV for that, but she’d never known someone who died, at least not known them before they died and had to suffer the loss; this proposal lacked the hard reality of blood and body, police and investigations; it had no sense of the finality of taking everything a man had in this world and being unable to give it back. What it did have was the hazy sense of the deliverance Dan had brought to them five years earlier when she was six, and she and three year old Debbie would hide in the closet with Elizabeth during their father’s drunken rampages. This was the only clear images of him that remained with her. In her memory, Dan the protector and warrior tucked them away safe from the monster and went off to battle it on behalf of their mother, caught as she was in its clutches. He bore the scars to this day. The recollections were faded and often disjointed, this sense of Dan, however, was undiminished; he was her hero.

After a long pause, interrupted only by thoughtful glares one to the other, Allison went on, "Dan's right, we have to get rid of him... for Mom."

—2—

It would be overstating the matter to suggest that Daniel reasoned his way to his intention. Being 15 years old, the idea was mostly a flailing emotional reaction rooted firmly in horrific memories and fanned to flame by a self-accusing disappointment in himself for allowing hope to seed. Survival, both external and internal, was a brutal game in which one needed to teeter precariously between sociability and self-protection, co-operative effort and selfish acquisition, selfish for family that is... or at least some family.

Daniel had learned long ago that the only people he could trust were his mother and his sisters. This was not a bitter thought, exactly, so much as a lesson learned about the real world. Life was hard, and it was his responsibility to protect the family and, someday, to provide for them better than his mother had proven able on 1/4 minimum wage and the kindness of strangers who dropped pocket change on her tables on their way out the door of The Beautiful Pig. The food was tasty, but so greasy that his mother had mused that it should be called Arteries End.

Dan had made it difficult for Alex for months after their mother had first introduced him at a church picnic. The picnic should have been his first clue. It's not that they were irreligious or anything, but Mother worked most Sundays, leaving their church attendance somewhat spotty. But the picnic... no, she'd gotten that day off special, made them all dress up extra nice, acted like a nervous cat, giggly and painfully happy even when he'd fallen asleep in service and started to snore... a service Alex had not attended, by the way.

Even so, Alex made quite a splash at the picnic when he did show up. Mother's sometimes friends were all aflutter, whispering behind hands, giving repeated one armed side hugs to her with bright smiles of approval. He's so handsome. Did you see that car? She says he is such a gentleman. He lives next door to his parents so he can take better care of them. What a phony.

Even the men liked him. Especially, the Pastor, who'd gone out of his way to collar him into a long chat out in the parking lot. Alex took off his suit jacket… who wears a suit to a picnic… rolled up his sleeves and ran a few plays of touch football in spite of his shoes. Dan had tried to tackle him, to mess up his dress pants a little, but all Alex did was sidestep him and give him a playful whop on the back of the head with the football as he flew passed.

Alex didn't even get angry with him for trying it. After his touchdown pass, a perfect 50 yard spiral to hear tell of it, he just stuck out his hand and said, "You've got some real speed, Dan. Do you play for the high school team? You should." Made Dan sick just thinking about it.

The girls had loved him almost immediately, but they were younger, they didn't remember as well; they hadn't learned the way of things yet. Alex had brought gifts, which he waited until after to the picnic to hand over... “He's so thoughtful; he didn't want to hurt the other children's feelings by giving gifts in front of them,” mother had cooed. Nauseating.

Then Alex bought ice cream for all the kids at the picnic when Peter Palagi's came by. When they'd first moved to Rochester to hide from his father, his mother had told the kids that Peter Palagi's was a music truck, which seemed weird, but, new town odd people. Believe it or not, it took one whole summer and half of another before they'd learned the truth. He'd wondered why the neighborhood kids always got excited and ran home before chasing the truck down the street. If he and his sisters had bothered to make any friends, they would have figured it out sooner, and, he supposed, they would have been that much poorer than they already were... so, no foul there, Mother. But bringing Alexander Antipas Thanus into their lives? Yes, that was a foul.

She might be excused for marrying someone like his father; she was only 18, trying desperately to get away from home. She'd said her old man was quite a bully himself, but Dan had never met him. Besides, his father had been quite a charmer when he wasn't drinking. Everybody liked him; it was even hard to hold a grudge after he sobered up with real tears of apology and waves of promises of never again that only ended when he took his next drink.

And it was this that really tripped Dan up. Alex, as far as he knew, and as far as Alex claimed, did not drink, not a drop. He said he hated the taste of the little bit he'd been forced to consume and couldn't get a beer passed his nose to pour it down his gullet. Taste aside, he said he hated the idea of being out of control, of being less than at the top of his game, less fit to make right judgments. He'd snowed Dan good, he had. Alex knew just what to say to get past Dan’s defenses. At least his father's violence was rooted in something external; Alexander's, if he was telling the truth about not drinking, must spring from something truer to his nature, something that was a fundamental part of himself when in his right and sober mind.

Six months after Alex walked into The Beautiful Pig while visiting his Rochester store one block south, five months after the church picnic, he had won them all over, even Dan. Alex was patient, but not a pushover. Took no crap from Dan, but was always kind. Saw through his sisters' girlie-manipulations, but doted on them like they were princesses. He was generous, but not ostentatious. He was respectful to Dan's mother in a way that his father could not have faked on his best day. Even when the start of the new school year forced them to move in with Alex a week before the wedding, he set Dan's mother up in her own bedroom in his parents' house next door. Of course, "next door" in Alex’s neck of the woods was a bit further away than in most neighborhoods. The nearest house was ¼ mile away.

Alex seemed to treasure Dan's mother without being blind to her weaknesses, and seemed to want to empower her in herself, not make her a dependent cripple, clinging to him in desperation and fear. He convinced her to start courses at Stonehill so she could become whatever she'd always dreamt of being. His father, even when sober, only ever wanted her for himself, feeling threatened if she even suggested going back to school, or made too much money in a given week; her neediness was his hook.

When Alex had proposed, it was a joyous event in their house, a stimulus to random bouts of dancing, what his mother called going footloose. Dan thought the movie was unrealistic… as if towns existed where the local pastor dominated everyone's lives… but the idea of going nuts and dancing around like an idiot without caring that you looked stupid was kind of cool.

Alex had even taken Dan out ahead of time and talked with him about wanting to marry his mother, actually asking his permission, wondering what Elizabeth and the girls would think about it. He knew he would be absorbing a whole family, one that he truly loved and wished to share with Dan's mother on every level. It took everything Dan had to keep from crying in front of him. It was like something melted his insides, softening his carefully guarded resolve to hate and distrust, lifting from his shoulders a burden too heavy to bear, though he'd hardly known he'd been carrying it until it lifted. Alex would care for them; he would supply their needs; Dan could just be a brother, a son, and no more.

He clenched his fists in injured rage at the memory of it; the world warbled and blurred as tears welled; he shook with fury, with determination to regain what Alex had stolen from him, to cast off hope in fairytales and happily-ever-afters once and for all.

Dan dried his eyes with his sleeve and washed his face in the sink of the bathroom attached to his room. It was awesome having his own bathroom. Being the only boy, he'd always had his own bedroom, but it stunk having to share a bathroom with a bunch of girls; they were always whining about the seat, about the toilet paper roll, about the towels, and mostly about how much time he seemed to be spending in there of late. Well, sharing a bathroom with them was no day at the beach for him either. Disgusting hair clumps in the shower drain, make-up containers and hair utensils everywhere, not a moments peace while he was... using the bathroom. And the things they left laying on top of the bathroom trash can just about made him throw-up.

Dan steeled himself to go and meet his sisters for the secret family meeting, and checked his face in the mirror; it would not set the right mood if he looked like he'd been crying. The large numbered digital clock radio Alex had gotten him read 1:00 Am, so he turned out all his lights, and peeked out his door. It was like staring down the hall of an office building. Two could pass, each holding a jumbo laundry basket long-ways and not bump. In the slight glimmer that illuminated the hall from below his mother's new bedroom door, Dan could make out the ornate frames of the paintings hung high and low down the long stretch—real paintings.

As he passed Alex's door, Dan stopped and put his ear to it. One day, they get a call from Alex saying that he and Dan's mother are coming home early from their honeymoon, the next morning the contractor shows up and installs bars on the insides of the bedroom windows, and a steel door into the hall. They put stuff on the walls too, some type of sound proofing was Dan's guess. Not that it completely silenced the screams of rage and pain that had been wafting through night by night since they arrived back and dismissed their "governess" i.e. ancient, tipsy-by-night babysitter, with a full months pay per her contract.

The sound proofing was good; he could not make out actual words, but he had heard enough of these sounds over the years to get the picture. Alex's general wonderfulness had been a grand play, some sick game designed to bring his mother and her brood under his power. He wanted to start beating on the door, to draw Alex's rage away from his mother, onto himself like he did so often during the bad years, but it would be counterproductive.

No, he would play the same game Alex had played, luring him in, and, then, crush him like a bug unawares. It would be hard not to gloat; he wanted Alex to know that he had beaten him at his own game, but any tell might cheat them out of a victory, and victory was more important than crowing.

So, he passed on, leaving the muffled screams and pitiful whimpers behind, and rapped on the girls' door—three short knocks followed by one long knuckle drag. The lock clicked, the door opened quietly in the dark, and Dan entered hoping against hope for his sisters to be sensible and not all touchy-feely about it. He shut the door, locked it, put a blanket at the bottom crack to keep light from showing, and flipped the switch to on.

Allison and Little Debbie were sitting upright on Allison's canopy bed, each clutching a stuffed animal, in brand new ankle length flannel night gowns. Looking like they’d just stepped out of a Little House on the Prairie book, they wore matching pastel yellow with white thick laced frilly edging at every opening. Elizabeth, having beaten him here by several minutes, was sitting on Little Debbie's bed. The girls could have had separate bedrooms if they'd wanted, but preferred to stay together. Elizabeth had dragged the easy chair over from the corner and set it to form a triangle with her and the girls. He sat, trying his best to look calm and cool, a man in charge, a man with a plan.

Normally, his mother would need to be there, to make this an official family meeting, but she was in no condition to sit in, and would have no means to sneak away unnoticed, and given her obviously bad taste in men, even if she could attend, would not be inclined to act in her own best interests... or theirs. They would need to take control here; she'd just have to thank them later if she ever figured it out.

"We have to kill him," Daniel said.

Continued in Parts III & IV.