Bad Vibes

BAD VIBES

Her screaming hit him louder than the thunder and rain.

“I’m done with this; we are over. Let me out now.”

“Janie, that’s crazy. Let’s go back to your sister's house, or hotel, I call it, because 10000 square feet, stables, horses, and a swimming pool the size of their tennis court is not a house.”

‘If you would get a good job instead of being a teacher, maybe we could have something bigger than that dump we live in,” she screamed, slightly less loud now. “Pull the car over”. Her face was red and scrunched up in anger. “ Now Melvin”

Melvin sighed. Worry lines rippled across his forehead, which joined his receding bald head, one strip of hair stuck in a mutant comb-over. He pulled the ten-year-old Toyota to the shoulder under a bridge. Rain fell like a waterfall on the ends of the overpass. Melvin had bad vibes now.  Janie reached a pudgy hand with long red nails, two with glitter, toward the door. Melvin pulled her hand away.

“don’t be stupid, Janie. It’s the middle of the worst storm we’ve had in a month. You will get hurt if you get out of the car. “

She slapped his hand away, opened the door, and threw considerable weight out. She moved out of the protection of the underpass and started walking back toward her sister’s estate on the hill in the distance. Melvin got out and went after her, rain pelting down on them both so hard that he could hardly see. Janie saw him coming and climbed over the guardrail.

“Janie, don’t.” His frustration was evident in a scowl, but his face showed genuine concern. She ignored him. Gravel gave way under her foot. She lost her balance and fell, rolling over and over, ending up in the gulley at the bottom of the hill. Water filled the gully to four feet, rushing like a river rapids.

Janie hit the water with a highly visible splash, but she got her knees under her and raised her head above the waterline. Then she screamed louder than anything Melvin had ever heard. He saw what she screamed at. A body was being pushed by the racing water,

bumping into Janie, then rolling over, face up. Janie screamed again, looking at the face of her sister Rose.

Rose had a note pinned on her shirt, the writing large, and the note itself in a sealed gallon baggie. It read, “Sorry, sister, but I must leave. Be Careful!”

Melvin had come down the hill, sliding on the grass, then walking up to Janie’s side. She cried miserably, holding her sister’s head in her lap. Looking up at Melvin, she said, “Why, why, sobs broke her words, and her tears ran hard, mixing with the pouring rain. Melvin kneeled next to her in the water.

“Let’s get her out of the water,” he said. Rose was as thin as Janie was fat and easily lifted out on the water. They laid her down on the bank of a now rapid and growing stream.

Melvin wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders, consoling her as best he could. He called 911 and alerted the police about the body. Janie rocked slowly back and forth in his arms.

State troopers came and sealed the scene with yellow tape. Just like on TV, Melvin thought. One of the troopers, Officer Shawn Jacobs, asked them question after question about Rose and her state of mind, medical problems, or anything that they had seen. Truthfully, neither of them had paid much attention as they focused on their own problems. Officer Jacobs handed Melvin his card.

“Please call if you remember anything else, sir.” Then Officer Jacobs left them to their grief, rain, and the ever-growing gully washer.

Melvin and Janie watched until they took Rose’s body away to the morgue, then went back to the car, suddenly tragic and empty. Janie lived alone after divorcing a wealthy man several years earlier who had been eager to end their marriage. So urgently, he gave Jainie the house and a huge alimony.

“I might have gone mad myself if I lived here all alone,” Melvin said. Janie said nothing. She sat mute, unmoving her face, that of a mannequin. Melvin watched her. This was not good; anything would be better than this silence, drained of emotion on her face, limbs still. He lifted her hand and let it drop, but it stayed in the air, like she was a plastic figurine, waiting for someone else to move her.

He drove back to the house. He got her out of the car and inside the house, but it was slow, distance covered in the slow-motion dance of a puppet. He sat her on the sofa and sat down beside her.

Janie, would you like some tea? And I can get you some of those gingersnaps that you like.

Nothing. He sat for a moment studying the lifelike doll beside him, all emotions locked inside her. Catatonic, that’s what held Janie now. Melvin left and brought back the tea and gingersnaps, placing them on the table before her. He slid a ceramic painted coaster under the teacup, thinking that it really was of no consequence if the cup left a ring on the table. At least that would be evidence of life

Melvin called his brother Greg, a psychiatrist, and asked him to come by to see Janie. If her sister had indeed killed herself, he did not want the same thing to happen to  Janie.

When Melvin heard the doorbell ring, he went and greeted his brother Greg, hugged him, and said, “Thanks for coming, Greg. I’m scared for Janie and myself, of course. It’s one thing to learn that your sister committed suicide but quite another to have her body hit you in a flood.” Tears brimmed in Melvin's eyes; he wiped them away harshly. He did not need tears now but to be strong.

“Let me see her, Melvin,” Greg said, laying a supportive hand on his brother’s shoulder. He knew that Melvin, too, was in shock, and he needed to include both in evaluations.

“We were fighting Greg. Big surprise, right? Somedays, it’s all we do, and today, we are ranked up there with the worst of them.”

Greg could have asked him what they were fighting about, but it did not matter. It had become their preferred method of communication. Greg wondered how Melvin and Janie’s marriage survived.

Melvin recounted the events at the underpass, the storm, Janie falling down the hill, and how he followed her right up to the point where the floating dead body of Rose, being swept in the water, crashed into Janie.

“Have you ever thought of suicide, Melvin?” Greg asked him. “I have.

Once I walked into the sea to die, let the tide take me away to somewhere else.”

‘What happened?”

“The obvious, of course,” Greg said. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“When I was younger, but as you said, the obvious happened.”

“Janie is in danger. Siblings of suicides kill themselves off at higher rates than normal.”

“So, she’s just a statistic, Greg?.”

“Relax, she’s not a statistic. She is a wounded person who we should love even more than usual. That’s all the therapy she needs now, stronger stuff later, but love for now.”

“This way,” Melvin led Greg into the living room, where statue Janie sat, eyes transfixed on something that wasn’t there. They stood, studying her, with her grief but not in it. Greg sat down and looked into Janie’s eyes for a long moment. Then he took out a penlight and checked them. Normal. He put his arms around her and got no response.

“Melvin, sit on her other side and hold her.”

Melvin did, feeling the quietly shaking body of his wife, his heat melting for her, and he began to cry; then, after a moment, Greg started to cry. Finally, her mind giving into her grief, her locked mind and body free, Janie’s tears fell in torrents that might last forever. Sometimes, the monsters we face are within us.