Sun, November 22, 2074 6:10 pm: Goth Manor- Rawling Hills, Pleasantview
Alexander stared at the half-empty bottle of cognac perched near the center of the table and imagined what might happen if he threw it against a wall. Perhaps the noise would come first, discordant and shrill. Perhaps the glass-riddled air would glitter in the instant before the shards settled. Perhaps Angela would ask, "What the hell is wrong with you?" Perhaps Enoch would laugh. Perhaps the baby would shriek. Perhaps Lydia would exhale once and blink twice.
Alexander had awoken that morning much the same way he did everyday. In the bathroom, he stopped to look at himself in the mirror and realized not that he disliked what he saw but that there was nothing to see. The room was no more occupied with him in it than it would have been without.
And sometimes, when he noticed the penetrating, accusatory stares that Lydia gave to his eldest son- When her loathing was at its most palpable to no one else but him- Alexander thought that she might be suffering from a similar affliction. The two of them could have been on fire and everyone else would have just gone on eating their dinner.
A single chair separated Lydia from Alexander but it might as well have been a continent. Lydia never sat near enough for him to pour her drink or accidentally brush the side of her leg with his own. He was almost certain that she kept her distance intentionally. Even in his fantasies, she would chastise him for fantasizing.
"I heard some interesting news today," Horace said, laying his chopsticks down on the table. "The Tellermans are expecting a crop of pinot noir grapes this winter." Rolling her eyes, Angela wiped her mouth with her napkin.
"You must have heard wrong. Pinot noir doesn't grow in November in this climate." Horace tapped his mother on the shoulder.
"That's what makes the news so interesting, isn't it?"
"Since when do the Tellermans grow wine grapes anyway," Enoch snorted. "Some of their fields are damp enough to be rice patties."
Alexander ran his fingers around the rim of his bowl, staring directly at Angela but not sparing her a thought. She spoke with her hands as much as she did with her mouth and Alexander found it to be vaguely hypnotic. His wife was a blur of fingers and sleeves. Alexander rested his neck on his palm, accidentally finding his pulse. He fancied that each pair of beats was a warning. Tempus. Fugit. Tempus. Fugit. If only he could be someone else. Anyone else.
Lydia tossed her unkempt hair over her shoulder. Alexander couldn't help but stare at the milky, pristine length of her neck. Tempus. Fugit. Everyone deserved to get what they wanted out of life. But he was a Goth and Goths were never quite so fortunate.
August 11, 2049 11:52 pm: Goth Manor- Rawling Hills, Pleasantview (Twenty-Five Years earlier)
The door slammed. Alexander climbed atop his father's oak desk and flattened his body against the wall, realizing too late that he should have hidden underneath instead. He was not meant to still be awake at that time of night and in any case, he had a guilty conscience. He was planning to go outside to catch the last fireflies of the season.
"The men of your family seem to have a preternatural talent for seducing women of a certain ilk but I refuse to allow my daughter to be taken in by the illiterate half-breed that mows our lawn." It was his mother's voice. Alexander peeked around the corner. She was standing in the foyer with the gardener, her face partially obscured by the brim of her hat.
"We're just friends is all." The gardener cast his eyes to ground as he spoke. Alexander's mother lightly placed her palm at the base of her throat, seeming to choke on the stagnant air between them.
"Friends?Friends? Do you think I'm some kind of simpleton? What could the two of you possibly have in common?" The gardener shook his head slowly.
"All due respect Mrs. Goth, if you don't know then you wouldn't understand." Bella folded her arms over her chest, exasperated.
"Whatever the nature of your relationship with Cassandra, it ends now. And you had better pray that her father does not get wind of this."
"Yes ma'am."
"I've decided to put Bachelor Manor on the market. You and your men will maintain that property until its sale."
"You're kicking me off my work here?"
"That is correct, Mr. Lothario." The gardener ran his fingers through his slick black hair. Alexander remarked the man's eyes for the first time. They were green like the sludge on the stream banks of Arbormoor Forest.
"That poor girl doesn't have another person in the world to talk to but me and you're gonna take that away from her too?"
"My daughter is not your concern."
"She got her father on one end making her sick to death expect'n too much of her and you on the other end forcing her to be something she's not. Being with me is the only time she's ever allowed to just be a normal kid-"
"She is not a normal kid. She is a Goth. And you would do well to remember it. Goodnight, Mr. Lothario." Alexander knew that tone of voice well. The gardener was on thin ice. He yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind him.
Alexander slid down the wall until he was crouching. In a moment or two, his mother would round the corner and find him sitting there. He expected to be the recipient of her misplaced frustration. He expected her to grab him by the ear and drag him up to his room. As it happened, she looked right at him, blank and unreadable. Then she silently walked away as though he had never been seen.
Mon, November 9, 2074 10:15 pm: Lothario Hall- Rawling Hills, Pleasantview
That morning, Adelaide had packed the last of her father's clothing and belongings to be stored away in the attic. It seemed a reasonable enough idea at the time but as Dina prepared for bed in a barren room, she discovered that Don had never been more conspicuous than he was in his absence. Every blank space was a signpost stamped with his name. There was the spotless corner where he used to discard his shoes, the pristine pillow where he drooled alongside his granddaughter, the unoccupied settee where he would watch Dina brushing her hair. Dina drove her fingertips into her tear ducts in an attempt to stifle her rising anguish.
Three weeks, four days, seven hours. Would she spend the rest of her life emptying picture frames and drugging herself to sleep?
Her doctor had prescribed an entire cornucopia of mood stabilizers and barbiturates for her insomnia. Dina had even experimentally taken Adelaide's post-caesarean painkillers. It did not then come as a terrible shock when the mattress creaked under the weight of his body. Dina caught a familiar set of movements out of the corner of her eye but she refused to look. It would be agony to look.
"What's got your goat?" Oh God, it had spoken to her. Tomorrow night, she would take the sleeping pills and nothing else. When Dina failed to respond, the apparition tentatively eased in closer to her. She could almost swear she heard him breathing. He chuckled in his low and vulgar way. "You didn't really think that a little thing like cardiac arrest was gonna keep me from seeing my favorite girl, now did you?" Dina bit the inside of her cheeks until she tasted blood. She would not gasp. She would not cry. She would do nothing to acknowledge just how Don-like the hallucination was.
"I'm going to close my eyes and count down from ten," Dina whispered. "When I open them, you will have retreated back into my subconscious." The apparition winced in pain.
"Aw come on, sugar. Don't be like that." Dina summoned her courage and looked at him. He was young, much younger than she had ever seen him in life. Delirium was a strange thing. And as far as Dina knew, it was not a normal stage of grief.
"Ten, nine, eight-"
"Babe, if you don't want me here, I'll go. All you have to do is ask."
"Seven, six, five..."
He laid his hand on top of hers, his fingers icy and smooth as polished steel. Dina reflexively pulled away. She closed her eyes and parted her lips to continue counting when she felt his weight lifted from the bed. Looking over, she found that the pillow beside her still bore the imprint of his shoulders. She was delusional. She was dreaming.
"Over here, Deen." His voice rattled the window panes. Dina clutched the bed sheets at her sides, more afraid of ghosts and shadows than she had ever been in her life.
Don stood in the far corner of the room, bandaged and bleeding as she had seen him only once before. She gritted her teeth and shot the apparition a venomous glare.
"You- Are- Not- Real," Dina snarled.
"Oh would you shut-up with that? You know what you're seeing. I prepared you for this a long time ago." Dina shook her head vehemently, tears spilling down her cheeks and collecting at the edges of her mouth. He was dead. He was gone. And this... This was unfathomable. "Anyway, I'm here to tell you that the shit's about to hit the fan. Take care of yourself, Deen. And take care of our family. You know how I love you." Don vanished just as quickly as he had appeared.
Dina stared upwards, unblinking. The more desperately she wished to banish them, the more vivid her memories became. She banged her head against the backboard, silently praying for oblivion. Colored silhouettes materialized and shifted. Her mind's eye was painting the ceiling with Don's broken bones.
July 31, 2052 8:43pm: 47 Peacock Lane- Camden, Pleasantview (Twenty-Two Years earlier)
"Donald?" The door snapped violently shut behind her, pulled by an angry wind. Don was seated in a dark corner of his kitchen, his torso and hands wrapped in surgical gauze. Dina slowly crept across the room, approaching him as one might a wild animal.
At length, he raised his head to look at her, stopping her in her tracks. He smiled weakly.
"Hey there, beautiful. What are you doing here?"
"I- I'm just visiting. Don, what happened to you?"
Don rose from his chair and began shuffling across the floor to meet her. All that Dina could do was stare at him, gaping.
"You shouldn't have gotten up for me."
"Are you kidding? I'd jump off a cliff if I thought I'd find you at the bottom."
"With the state you're in, I believe it. You look like hell." Dina traced her fingers down his abdomen, only then noticing the crimson stains blossoming across his side. "Don, you're bleeding!"
"Hey babe, calm down. Let's not worry about me. I'm ok. This isn't the first set of cracked ribs I've ever had."
"What happened," Dina begged.
"Can we take a seat?"
"Of course." Don collapsed into his chair in such a way that Dina realized he couldn't have remained standing much longer.
"Your husband happened to me. He sent that snot-nosed kid London over here to kick my ass." And seeing the horror that washed over Dina's face, he hastened to add, "It wasn't about you or whatever. Mortimer's looking for someone and he thinks I know where to find them."
"It's... Not Bella, is it?" Don snorted.
"Mortimer has always known where Bella is. And it sure ain't at the bottom of Blue Lake."
"I don't think I understand."
"You shouldn't. I never wanted to get you involved."
Dina rapped her fingernails against the tabletop, somewhere between pity and extreme annoyance. Don shrank away from her like a child caught in the act of truancy.
"Have you been to a hospital?"
"No but-"
"Don't you think that it might be wise to do so?"
"Well you see-"
"What if there's permanent damage? What if you're bleeding internally?"
"Dina, I always-"
"Who is Mortimer looking for?" Don pursed his lips and said nothing.
"I'm already involved," Dina yelled. "By multiple degrees, I'm involved! This is the father of my child, we're talking about. Who is he looking for?" Don winced, as uncomfortable with the mention of Isabella's paternity as he had ever been.
"It's... He's looking someone my mom used to know. A man by the name of Kvornan Tricou." Kvornan Tricou? Why did that name sound so familiar? Dina leaned back in her chair, combing her memory. And then in a flash she saw it- A large marble tombstone at Gothier Green Lawns, not far from where Michael was buried: Kvornan Tricou, beloved husband and father.
"Mortimer is a fucking idiot. Kvornan Tricou is dead," she scoffed. Don cleared his throat. He reached for the packet of cigarettes at the center of the table and began tapping it against his palm.
"Well," he said. "That's certainly one theory."
