This Is Not Over Part 34

"I'm not here to make a purchase," I say. "This is awkward, so I'll just introduce myself. My name is Miranda Feldt. You're Rob Thiebold, correct?"

His expression changes instantly. Gone is your friendly neighborhood salesman, and in its place, a fire-breathing dragon. "You're Miranda?"

"I don't know what you've heard about me, but I have some information for you."

"I don't want to hear anything from you. You've been hara.s.sing my wife."

"It's most certainly the other way around."

His lip curls in disgust. "You need to leave my store."

"It's natural that you'd want to side with your wife. But there are some things you don't know about her. There are some things I could tell you that might change the way you feel about the situation, and her."

"You've already done enough damage."

Damage? To Dawn or to him? To their marriage?

Good.

"She's done far more damage to me, I can a.s.sure you," I say. "And, potentially, to my son."

"I don't know anything about your son, and I don't want to. I'm asking you to leave. If you don't, I'll call the police."

The idea that he would need the police against me is so outrageous that something inside me snaps. "You need to hear the truth! Your wife has been lying to you! About me, and my supposed hara.s.sment of her! And about her extracurricular activities!"

Suddenly, I can see it so clearly. Dawn's henchman was Thad. That's who Calvin saw skulking. That's who put the rat in my pool. Is that who soiled my sheets?

"She's been with my son," I say. "He's been doing her dirty work."

"Get out of my store, now!"

"No!" Getting thrown out of two places in one day-I'd thought I couldn't sink any lower. But I will not be silenced. "You're going to hear the truth! Your wife is having an affair with my son! His name is Thad Feldt. Find him on Twitter. Your wife, Dawn T. Bold, is inspiring him!"

Rob storms around the counter, and I feel a twinge of fear. He's not a small man, and he's as fired up as I am. Dawn doesn't deserve him and his loyalty, his defense of her honor. Her honor. What a joke.

"Leave my wife alone, and leave me alone." He grabs my arm and begins to yank me toward the door.

"Take your hands off me," I shout. Then I yell out Thad's Twitter handle, but by then, he's hustled me out on the street. I'm still yelling, and pedestrians are shooting me quick glances and then averting their eyes, the way you would from some crazy homeless woman making a spectacle.

I ignore them, trying to catch my breath as I decide what to do next. A part of me wants to call the police myself. A man should not lay his hands on a woman, under any circ.u.mstances. He's a business owner, or at least, his family is. I could do him harm.

But I don't want to. None of this is his fault. It's hers. He's just a fool in love. Like Thad.

Rob isn't willing to listen, not yet. But I've planted the seed, and it could grow fruit. In the meantime, I know her address.

She's not just messing with me anymore. I'm a mama bear, and she's threatening my cub. He might be a grown man, but he's stalled out emotionally, like all addicts. He's so susceptible to her wiles that he would attack his own mother. That's the behavior of an adolescent, someone who can't see until tomorrow and the next day. A foreshortened future, that's addiction in a nutsh.e.l.l. They used that phrase a bunch in Nar-Anon.

I feel unadulterated rage. At Larry, and at Thad, and at a life that's spinning out of my control. But really, it comes down to Dawn. She's the one threatening to destroy me, and Thad, and I have to get to her first.

I'm not going to leave Dawn alone, no matter what Rob says. On the contrary, I'm going right for her. She'll never see me coming.

For some strange reason, I find myself smiling. She won't see me coming, but ultimately, she will see me and she'll hear me, clear as bells.

55.

Dawn

Don't let your grad be forgotten #engravingisthenewblack I don't know how it happened, how the vodka got into the orange juice, but I'm feeling a whole lot better about everything now. Thad would never hurt me. He's here for the opposite reason.

I'm feeling good, actually, sitting here on the couch with Thad, buzzed, not drunk. At the moment, Thad seems neither ominous nor ridiculous but nearly attractive. He probably has a trust fund coming to him at some point, and an inheritance. There are worse horses to bet on.

He still wants me to tell him my secrets, but now he says it lightly, teasingly, and honestly, I can't seem to keep track of what I've said. Sometimes he's nodding with his eyebrows knitted together like I'm revealing something deep as the cosmos, and then seconds later we're both laughing, our heads lolling back on the cushions.

I've gotten past the cadaverous appearance and the teeth. It's like I'm looking through some kind of digital enhancement, a blue screen of sorts, and his teeth have lost that jack-o'-lantern quality and he's put on twenty pounds. He's the Thad I first saw on the Internet, the one at his high school graduation, flanked by his well-heeled parents, full of promise, headed to UC Santa Barbara.

I'm not sure what the segue is, but Thad has gotten serious. He's talking about his parents, and part of me wants to stop him because I'm just not interested in Miranda anymore. I finally am letting go of all that, but it seems like he really needs to talk.

I'm not catching every single word through my buzz but I do get this: The good doctor is actually a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and he has screwed Miranda's relationship with Thad big-time. When he was drunk, Mr. Hyde came out. He would go into Thad's room for their late-night chats and he'd poison Thad against his mom. It went on for years and years, so long that it seemed like Thad didn't know where his dad's version of Miranda ended and his own experiences began. It was stressful, being fed all these stories about his mother, and it might have even been part of why Thad started using drugs, so he could be elated instead of confused, at least for a little while.

"I wanted to be perfect myself," he says. "I wanted my mother to love me like I was but she never could. It was all an act."

"How do you know it was an act?"

"I could feel it."

"But did you feel it because you took your dad's word for it?"

"I'll tell you a story," he says, "and at the end of it, you'll see."

I take a swig and get ready to listen.

Thad tells me that when he was fourteen, his father came into his room, sobbing. He'd killed somebody on the operating table, an old guy who was probably going to die soon anyway, but his dad was such a good person that he was still royally torn up. "I'd had one drink," he cried to Thad, "to take the edge off. To deal with the pressure your mom was always putting on me. I never should have done it."

Thad said his dad was obviously tormented, crying and shaking. What he'd wanted was for his wife to tell him it was okay that he'd made a mistake. He wanted her to tell him that he didn't need to be perfect, that he should own up and take responsibility, which was what he really wanted. He wanted to make things right with the hospital, and with the family. But of course, she'd never tell him that. She didn't want a black mark on him, and on her. So he had to cover it up.

Over the coming months, he cried other times, too. He always felt so bad about it, but there was no way to make it right now, was there? He had to live with it.

"I said to my dad that he couldn't admit that he'd lied, after the fact. It would ruin him, and my dad said exactly, he was trapped. That f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h. She trapped him. She destroyed my dad."

"He doesn't sound so destroyed when you talk about him," I say. What he sounds is evil. He kills someone while he's drunk but he can't come clean because his wife won't let him?

"That's because he's strong. He found a way to deal with it."

Poor Miranda. Her whole relationship with her son's been hijacked by Mr. Hyde, and I bet she doesn't even know it. Thad clearly doesn't get it. I'm trying to think how to break the news when the front door flies open.

My reflexes have been substantially slowed by my buzz. Before I can even register what's happening, Rob's standing in front of the couch, his chest heaving. He looks ma.s.sive, like Thor. It must be the contrast with Thad. My vodka goggles disappear instantly, and I see Thad as he in fact is, as Rob must.

I stand up. "It's not what it looks like." Oldest line in the book. Alcohol has never sparked my creativity. If only Thad had brought some meth.

Rob ignores me. He's focused on Thad. "Get up."

Thad puts his hands in the air. "I come in peace."

"You came to f.u.c.k my wife."

He shakes his head. "Like she said, it's not what it looks like. She needed a friend, I was in the area."

"I bet you were!" Rob roars. I didn't even know he could access that decibel. No, wait, I heard it once before. The road rage incident. Rob, my protector. "Get up!" Wait, wasn't he screaming that at me last night? He was spoiling for a fight then, too.

"Let's talk this over, man." I imagine Thad's been in situations far more dangerous than this one. Maybe you stay seated so that you're nonthreatening. It's zoo rules: You don't taunt the gorilla. Or you stay low to the ground and sweep the leg, like in The Karate Kid.

Thad could have tricks up his sleeve, though. He must go to all sorts of shady places to buy drugs. He has to know how to defend himself when he spots trouble. Rob went to a Christian college full of rich preps. He's the one in over his head. Whatever the state of our marriage, I don't want to see him hurt.

"Rob," I say, "Thad was just leaving."

"Thad." Rob nods briskly. "Of course. This is Thad."

"She's talked about me?" Thad queries.

"I just met your mother."

"My mother?" Thad glances at me, like we're on Candid Camera.

His mother? Rob met Miranda? So Miranda's in Oakland, trailing her son like a bloodhound? I know I'm a little slow on the uptake, but this is a lot to process.

"She said her son, Thad, was f.u.c.king my wife. I told her she was crazy." Now Rob's glaring at me. "I told her to get out of my store."

"You kicked my mother out of a store? Awesome!" Thad claps his hands together with a childish glee.

Rob turns back to Thad. "You're a real piece of work." Disrespecting mothers is definitely not the way to Rob's heart. His face has hardened to pure hatred. He advances, grabs Thad by the throat, and lifts him. I've never seen a maneuver like that in real life, and I wouldn't have expected my first time would be with Rob. Thad is dangling like a skeleton, and Rob actually hurls him toward the front door, then advances again. I think it has to be the adrenaline, the same thing that allows moms to lift cars off kids. Dads must be able to lift cars off kids, too, but you never hear about that.

Thad is scrambling backward, still on the floor. Rob is walking slowly, like he's relishing this moment, and that lets Thad get to his feet and sprint out the door. Rob looks back at me, like he's debating whether to chase Thad, and I say, "Let him go. We just texted sometimes, that's all."

Rob is looking back and forth, between the door and me, considering his next move. By now, Thad's got a head start. I hear the outer door to the building slamming shut downstairs.

The hatred is still on Rob's face, and now it's directed at me. "Lift your shirt."

Is he saying he wants to have s.e.x? Now? I don't know what I feel. His anger doesn't seem so attractive at the moment, but I know I need to do penance for Thad. "Nothing happened with Thad."

"Lift your shirt." Each word is guttural, through gritted teeth.

I find myself complying.

"I knew it," he spits out in disgust. "I knew you'd be wearing that bra."

It's not my workaday seamless T-shirt bra with the racerback; it's the one with the lacy cutouts around my nipples. Now, it's evidence. I wore it for Thad. Just in case.

"You would have f.u.c.ked him if I hadn't come home."

"I wouldn't have." I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. "Did you see his teeth?"

"You would have f.u.c.ked that nasty track-marked piece of s.h.i.t in the apartment I pay for. On my couch, or in my bed?" He looks like he still wants to hit someone. "My father was right. You're a gold digger."

"You see any gold around here?"

"I'm going to inherit the business."

I guess we're all delusional in our own ways. "A business that's worthless."

"We're tweeting now." There it is, that Thiebold optimism. I never stood a fighting chance at becoming one of them. "You don't know anything about the business."

"I know you have almost no customers. I know you lived in this apartment for three years before me, and we've been here more than three years together. That's not exactly upward mobility."

He looks away, like he's fighting for control. His fists clench and unclench. "We're not talking about me. We're talking about you."

"About me being a gold digger. Which I'm not. I've just been unhappy. My father pimped me out, my mother's a waste of s.p.a.ce, I'm begging Big Pharma for a job I don't even want, I'm texting a junkie, I've been hara.s.sing his mother for weeks. I've got to figure my s.h.i.t out, I know that. But I'm not normal, and I never will be, and that needs to be okay with you. It needs to be okay with me. Can it ever be okay with you?"

I see the answer in his eyes at the same time that I hear a male scream of agony from the street below. It's followed by a door opening and slamming, and a woman yelling, "Oh my G.o.d, help!" Then there are only wails.

56.

Miranda

I don't know what happened. I was sitting in my car outside Dawn's house, boiling for a confrontation, and a voice inside told me to wait. I thought it was some kind of guardian angel, or my mother coming through at last (maybe my mother died after I left and she was the guardian angel), and I trusted that voice.