The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 3

How much longer? Janet wondered. The unspoken question had seemed utterly innocuous when it first popped into her mind, relating to nothing more earthshaking than how much longer the reheated casserole in the oven might hold out before it would need the addition of a little milk to keep it palatable. But as she cracked the oven open to test the tuna and noodle concoction, the question that had posed itself in her mind kept coming back, each time attaching itself to another aspect of her life.

How much longer before Ted comes home?

How much longer until he gets fired again?

How much longer do the kids have to put up with the fights?

How much longer can I put up with it?

"Will you stop worrying, Mom?" she heard her son say, and for a moment she thought she must have spoken aloud. Then she saw the mischievous glint in Jared's eyes. "We'll just tell Kim and Molly that the mold is parsley, or blue cheese or something."

Janet took a mock swing at Jared with the mixing spoon, and he spun out of range with a grace she would have expected from a dancer rather than a football player. Not that Jared bore the bulk of most football players; at nearly sixteen, with only 160 pounds on his six-foot frame, he was considerably smaller and lighter than most of his teammates. Still, despite Jared's quick reflexes and lean agility, Janet always cringed when she saw those big, lumbering tackles charging toward her son. "I've never served you moldy food yet, Jared Conway, but if you keep that up, I just might start!"

"Want me to call Pa and see how late he's going to be?" Jared asked, ignoring her threat as he opened the drawer next to the sink and pulled out a handful of silverware. Though he'd tried to make the question sound casual, there was enough tightness in his voice to betray his true question: Shall I see if I can find Pa at all?

Janet hesitated, then shook her head. "Let's give him another half hour, then we'll go ahead and eat and I'll just save some for him."

Jared hesitated, too, and Janet thought he was going to say something else, but he picked up a bunch of paper napkins and began setting the Formica-topped table that she'd bought seventeen years ago at a garage sale. At the time, her mother had deemed it "perfectly acceptable for newlyweds." Janet suspected that her mother's words now wouldn't be nearly as charitable. In fact, she suspected her mother would be less than charitable about her whole situation. She glanced around the kitchen, which was even more in need of a coat of paint than the rest of the house, and wondered if there were any possibility of convincing the landlord to repaint the place, and fix the roof as well. Fat chance! She'd begged for new screens all summer, hoping that the kids wouldn't have to make the choice between sweating through the nights in airless bedrooms or opening the windows to clouds of merciless mosquitoes.

"Hey, they don't drink that much blood," Jared had replied last week when she'd wondered how he could stand the incessant buzzing in his tiny room at the back of the squat one-story bungalow. It was exactly the kind of response Ted would have made years ago, when they'd first been married and his alcohol intake was little more than an occasional extra drink at a party. There was so much of Ted in Jared, just as there was so much of herself in Jared's twin sister, Kim, that at times Janet wondered if she and Ted had somehow managed accidentally to clone themselves, rather than produce offspring that were an amalgamation of the two of them.

For Jared's sake, she prayed he wasn't too much like his father, just as she hoped that Kim wouldn't prove to have a weakness for the same kind of man she herself had married.

Which wasn't really fair, she reminded herself. When she met Ted Conway, he'd had an easygoing charm that was so unlike her own family's stiff formality, she'd fallen for him almost instantly. And for a long time the marriage had been fine. Ted had a knack for the hotel business, and both of them had assumed they'd wind up in Atlanta, or Miami, or even New Orleans, with Ted running one of the major hotels, and she showing in some of the better galleries.

But somewhere along the way his drinking had crossed a line neither of them quite noticed, and that was the end of their dreams.

Not that those dreams had completely slipped away: Janet still harbored fantasies of showing at the major galleries, though she'd long since stopped sharing her hopes with Ted, whose former appreciation of her talent had devolved to carping about the amount she spent on canvases, paints, and brushes.

His own dreams were still wildly alive, at least when he'd had a few too many drinks. Then she would hear about how bad the management was at whichever hotel had taken a chance on hiring him. Though there was a time when she might not have agreed with him, during the last couple of years, she'd had to admit he was at least partially right. After all, what manager who knew his job would hire Ted, given his reputation and his history?

So why had she stayed with him?

It was a question Janet had pondered more than once, and she was all too aware of the answer: She stayed with Ted because she didn't have the nerve to take the kids and strike out on her own. After all, how much worse could things get? She might not be able to make much money, but she suspected that whatever she could earn would stretch at least as far as Ted's paycheck, since she wouldn't be wasting a single cent of it on liquor. And the shock of her packing up the kids and leaving just might jolt Ted into taking an honest look at his own life. In the privacy of her own conscience, she knew she was at least as responsible for the conditions of her life as Ted was. But how much longer could it go on?

She was rescued from having to come up with an answer to that question by the sudden appearance of Molly, charging into the kitchen with far more energy than even a fifteen-month-old had the right to possess in the face of the heat and humidity that had settled thickly over the stillness of the evening. Right behind Molly came Kim, who swept her baby sister off the floor just as Molly was taking a desperate plunge toward the shelter of her mother's legs.

"Gotcha!" Kim cried out, raising the little girl high over her head and tipping her up so that Molly was peering almost straight down. Molly feigned outrage at being snatched off her feet, but her giggles got the better of her, and a huge grin spread across her face.

"Down!" she cried. "Wanna get down!"

"Oh, you do, do you?" Kim asked. "Okay, fine!"

Releasing her sister, she let Molly drop in free fall before closing her hands around the little girl's waist once more.

"Don't do that!" Janet cried out as Molly uttered a shriek far more of delight than fear. "I swear, you'll give me a heart attack!"

"She loves it," Kim replied, swinging her sister around, then lowering her to the floor.

"Again!" Molly cried, trying now to shimmy up the legs of the very same person she'd been trying to escape only seconds before. "Do it again!"

"After supper," Kim told her. "And if you're very, very good, I'll let you help me wash the dishes." Giving Molly a gentle nudge toward the kitchen door, Kim opened the cupboard that held the luncheon china Janet's mother had given her for a wedding present. "You don't need anything more formal for a few years, dear," Janet could still hear her mother saying, and she'd certainly turned out to be right. "Is Pa going to be here for dinner?" Kim asked.

Janet heard the same tension in Kim's voice that she'd caught a few minutes before in Jared's. "I'm not sure," she said carefully, maintaining the fiction that all was well within their family. "But let's set a plate for him. I know he'll be here if he can make it." Kim shot her a quick glance that Janet had no trouble reading: You mean if he's sober enough! But like Jared, Kim didn't push the issue. "We'll give him a few more minutes," Janet said.

But it was far more than a few more minutes before Ted came home that evening, and when he did-a little after eleven-his face was flushed, his step unsteady, and his eyes bloodshot from the long hours of drinking. Janet was alone in the living room, trying to concentrate on one of the books she'd gotten from the library that afternoon. Molly had been tucked into her crib hours earlier, and Kim and Jared had escaped the heat and uneasiness in the house by going to a movie. When Ted didn't call out to her as he came through the back door, Janet's suspicion that he'd been drinking all evening was confirmed. Steeling herself to cope with the argument that was surely coming when he finally appeared in the living room, she set the book aside.

"I quit that stinkin' job today," Ted announced without preamble as he confronted her, a beer clutched in his right hand.

Janet felt a sinking sensation in her stomach: she knew that whatever she said would be the wrong thing, but not saying anything at all would be even worse. "Did someone offer you something better?" she asked, choosing her words carefully, and keeping them free of any inflection that might trigger Ted's temper.

He dropped onto the sofa, his free hand landing on her thigh. "Just couldn't take Frank Gilman any longer. Man's a dumbass!"

"Well, I'm sure you'll find something else," Janet offered, but even through his drunkenness, Ted recognized her ploy.

His eyes narrowed to puffy slits, and his hand tightened on her thigh. "Don't patronize me."

Janet's mind raced, remembering the night two years ago when Ted came home even drunker than this, and decided he wanted to make love to her. She'd tried to put him off, but it hadn't worked, and rather than fight him, she'd given in.

It had been a horrible night for her. When she discovered she was pregnant, she'd toyed with the idea of getting an abortion, but only for a moment. And when Molly was born, Janet knew she'd been right. But she didn't want it to happen again. "I'm very tired, Ted," she began, but Ted only leered.

"Then let's go to bed."

She cast around in her mind for something else-anything to put him off-when the phone rang. The surprise of it startled Ted as much as Janet. His hand fell away from her leg as she stood up to answer it, thoughts of some accident to Kim and Jared already leaping into her mind.

"May I speak to Ted Conway, please?" a woman asked.

There was an official-sounding tone to the voice that raised Janet's apprehensions even further. But whatever news this caller possessed, Ted was in no condition to deal with it.

"This is Mrs. Conway," she replied.

"I'm sorry to call you so late," the woman said, and Janet's fear ebbed slightly. Surely no one would apologize if it was about her children, would they? "This is Lucille Mathers, from the Willows in St. Albans?" Janet felt the worst of her fears instantly abate. It wasn't the kids-it was Ted's aunt. "I'm calling about Cora Conway," the woman went on, confirming Janet's thought. "I think your husband should come down here."

Janet's mind raced. Right now? St. Albans was 140 miles southeast of Shreveport; even if they left right away, they wouldn't get there until three in the morning. And given Ted's condition… "How bad is she?" Janet asked. The last time she'd talked to the people at the Willows, Cora had been in a semicomatose state, and her condition hadn't changed in several months.

"I'm afraid it's not good," Lucille Mathers replied. Very quickly she added, "I don't think she can last more than another day." A pause. Then: "She wants to see your husband. If it's at all possible-"

"Tomorrow," Janet said, making an instant decision.

"We'll leave early in the morning, and we should be there by eleven. Can you tell her that?"

"Of course," Lucille Mathers replied. "We'll look for you in the morning, then."

Hanging up the phone, Janet told Ted about Cora's request. As she talked she wasn't sure he was even listening, but when he spoke, his tongue thickened with the liquor he'd consumed, she knew he had.

And she knew it was the alcohol that was replying to her, not her husband. At least she hoped it was.

"Why the hell should I go see Aunt Cora?" he demanded. "She's crazy as a loon, and always has been. What am I supposed to do about her?"

"For God's sake, Ted!" Janet snapped. "She's dying, and you're the only family she's got!"

"So?" Ted replied. "What's she ever done for me?" Then, before Janet could answer him, his head dropped down onto the sofa and his eyes closed.

Janet was tempted to leave him exactly as he was and go to bed, but remembering that Jared and Kim hadn't come home yet, she changed her mind. Let them at least think he'd been sober enough when he came home to get himself into bed, she decided.

Shaking him hard, she finally got him to wake up just enough to let her guide him into the bedroom. A second later he was unconscious again, sprawled out on the bed in his clothing, snoring loudly.

No more, Janet thought as she lay beside him an hour later. Though Jared and Kim had come in and gone to bed and, undoubtedly, right to sleep, she herself was still wide-awake, listening to Ted's heavy breathing.

Something was going to have to change.

She couldn't live this way any longer.

None of them could.