Break Point Down Read online

  “Lied?”

  “Yes,” she was silent for a while. Kitt respected her feelings, and waited.

  “I told him I loved him.”

  He took a deep breath, and did not answer.

  “I don't know if it was true.” She gestured helplessly. “Maybe I just said it to make him feel better. I sure haven't felt that way since—you know.”

  “Since he began to rape you.”

  She nodded.

  “I thought I hated him. I want to hate him. Then sometimes I think I don't care.”

  Again there was a brief silence.

  “When I said it, I meant it for just a minute. I couldn't think of what he did. I could only think of how he used to be and how he is now, and how sad I was for him. I wasn't faking it. But I don't really love him, either.”

  Kitt nodded.

  “When I was a kid I looked up to him. And now it's as if I am the older brother and he is the kid. Perhaps feelings like that, real love—maybe they never quite die. Still, it's not the same. And pity isn't the same as love, either.”

  She didn't answer that, but he saw her forehead creased in thought, and wondered what it all would lead to.

  “You didn't lie, Kari. Maybe what you felt was not the love you had for him once. I think we make up love like a recipe. A little of this, a little of that. What you had before was a child sort of love. If he hadn't molested you, it would have grown into a daughter-love, more grown-up, but still with that looking up you do as a child to your parents. But things changed when he assaulted you. So you made up a new kind. Perhaps now it's mostly pity. That may be all you can feel. And that's all right.”

  “Uncle Kitt—does it always change? Doesn't it ever just stay?”

  “I'm no expert, hon. But I know the way I love you—it will never be any less than what it is now. Right now you're sort of like my daughter and a bit of a little sister. When you're a grown woman, there'll still be that, but also more, just as you will be more and more of a person as you grow. Not just grow older, but grow up. Look at yourself, aren't you more than you were a year ago? Two years ago?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “And there will be more. Maybe love grows too. The old love is still there, but we keep adding to it. At least, that's how I see it.”

  “And Dad?”

  He sighed deeply.

  “He did horrendous things to you, so a lot more gets into it. I think you and I underneath it all still love him. I know I do. Not in the same way as before. One thing I have learned—we can't go back.”

  “Will we ever figure it all out?”

  “Sure we will. We'll make peace with your dad. But it will still have happened. It's not just happy endings. Some memories will always hurt. But life will be good again. And clean. I promise.”

  He stopped the car in the driveway. They sat for a time, silent. A whiny sleet began to seep from the bulging clouds overhead.

  “Last one in cooks dinner!”

  The phone call came two days later. Afterward he was glad it had been morning, because late at night would have been the worst, and he couldn't have got through the double darkness. It had come as a shock to the staff who'd found him that morning. It should have been impossible, because this prison had a foolproof detection system for drugs, especially to forestall this sort of thing. There was no way it should have worked.

  But it had.

  He sat at the table, trying to focus like all those years ago when he was told about the accident, and he'd felt like he was under water, hearing only vague, undifferentiated rumbles, coming from far away. Whispers and murmurs, echoing and bouncing off walls and ceilings, rising and falling, dipping down through the rush of waters and receding quickly, refusing to be anchored down and given meaning. Something inside resisted knowing. His thoughts drifted off to the farmhouse in Vermont—Dad playing the piano, walks in the hills with Mom and Dad and the dogs. His first Slam championship at Wimbledon, and the Christmas at Jeff and Laura's after Tony was born. Their hillside home filled with holiday smells and sights and sounds, and Jeff there, so happy with his new son.

  Jeff is my brother—not that shell in the courtroom in the expensive suit that makes him look like a stick figure. He isn't the cheat and the thief the judge was talking about, who lied and lied and blamed everybody else. The slimy reptile oozing out of his swamp to rape his child, over and over.

  Jeff was dead. It was a mad mix of fact and fantasy, as though he had willed him dead. He hadn't begun to hurt yet and still he felt sad and weary, as though he would like to just lie down and sob now, without knowing why.

  Jeff was dead. He'd plotted and bargained and saved the money Kitt had given him now and then for necessities or some little extras, buying a little here and a little there from fellow inmates until finally he'd looked at his little pile of pills and figured it was enough. He could go to sleep now, and forget about prisons and poverty and disgrace. He'd walked over to the sink and poured himself a cup of water, and swallowed them, a few at a time, till they were all gone and he knew that if he wanted to change his mind now, he'd have to alert the warden quickly. But he was Jeff and so he'd probably taken a couple of pills ahead of time so he'd be drowsy and content, nothing final quite yet, but not too drowsy to forget to take the rest if he still wanted to. He would have dulled his senses to fuzz over his fear and he'd just felt the easy, blissful painlessness of his dream world. It wouldn't have been so tough then to gulp down the rest. Feeling good, not thinking too clearly. No guts needed. He'd probably played a little with the pills, a bit of tiddly-winks.

  His head jerked back and he sat bolt upright. He had to tell Kari. Why, after all this time, after all they'd been through, after all the progress she had made—why now?

  Why now, when Kari is starting over? Can she do it again? Can I?

  Seething with rage he paced through the little house. Had Jeff ever, ever thought of anyone but himself? Even in death he kicked her in the teeth, figuring what would be easiest for him, calculating the most painless way. His strange look when told that Kari was out there waiting for him—of course, he'd had it all planned. Her visit hadn't made a bit of difference. Most likely Jeff hadn't given a moment's thought to the years of pain he was adding to her sentence. He didn't do sacrifice. Jeff took care of Jeff. He couldn't face a modest life, without luxury, respect, friends. Sorry, he'd said. That was sorry? Not freaking sorry enough. Playing the martyr, never saying out loud to himself that he was a nasty little pervert who had raped his daughter and betrayed his family. Always negotiating for respect and money, and never facing consequences.

  The rules never applied to Jeff. He had to have it all the easy way. Jeff wanted to be excused from the long haul back to his humanity, he wanted forgiveness without pain, without confession, and without struggle. He had never taken responsibility for the mess he had made out of all their lives, and now he had loaded his own prison sentence on his daughter.

  He screamed at the top of his voice, startling Thor from his corner pad.

  “You rotten jerk! Never mind Kari, right! Just so you don't have to pay. Don't worry, Kitt will clean up again. And again, and again and again and again! I hate you!”

  How long before Kari got home? But it might be on the news, now that the next of kin had been notified. He had to go find her.

  And say what?

  For a moment he was in a panic, his hands shaky as he snatched up the telephone and feverishly punched in numbers. Linda's voice sounded strangely calm on the other end.

  “How do I tell her, Linda? What do I say to her? How do I tell her that Dad took care of number one again?”

  “Oh Kitt, this is terrible. I am so sorry.”

  “What do I do, Linda? What do I say?”

  The look in Kari's eyes was like that of someone who has been unconscious for a while and comes to in complete confusion.

  “He just packed it in, Kari. He couldn't deal with his life as it was, and as he thought it was going to be. He was in a deep depr
ession.”

  She shook her head, and he was silent. When she finally spoke, he was horrified.

  “I went to see him. And then he killed himself.”

  “Kari, it wasn't about you. It had nothing to do with you.”

  “I killed him,” she said slowly, weighing the words and trying them out, testing their reality, and then trying to understand, and he heard the stirrings of a coming hysteria in the shivering syllables. He breathed deeply, and took her hand, but she jerked it away and stared past him.

  “Kari, it's not your fault! He was depressed, and he was way deep into himself. He wasn't listening to anybody. Maybe he didn't even understand what he was doing!”

  “I killed him. He was afraid I'd go to the police. I killed him.”

  “No, babe, no! You didn't. Nothing you or I did would have changed things.”

  Her white face frightened him. No grief, no sobs, nothing. Just that icy stare in the distance and that harsh certainty. Her voice held no question. I killed him. She gave him an almost pitying look and he got a feeling as though they were in some weird stage production, and she couldn't shake loose from the make-believe.

  “Everybody in this family has turned bad except you.”

  “Kari, stop it. Come here and sit down, will you, please?”

  She shook her head violently, and he saw her begin to tremble. Thor stirred and plodded over to Kari. He stood in front of her as though blocking her way, then suddenly rose on his hind legs and put his paws on her shoulders with just the tiniest, encouraging woof. An anguished sob welled from her throat, and she staggered for a moment under the dog's weight as Kitt ordered him down.

  “Kari, come here. Come and sit here—”

  The bell rang as he spoke and Thor whirled and ran to the door, barking furiously. Panic flashed in Kari's eyes.

  Kitt yelled at Linda to come in, afraid to take a step away from Kari, who looked like she was going to collapse. Thor blocked Linda's way as she tried to enter, but another shouted order from Kitt sent him trotting off to his pad. She walked across the room and took Kitt's hand in both of hers in a brief moment of silent comfort before she turned to Kari, who was backing away.

  “Don't, don't—”

  “It's all right, Kari. It's all right!” He put an arm around her shoulder, but she whirled on him.

  “Don't touch me! Don't touch me!”

  The little house shuddered as the bedroom door slammed behind her.

  Chapter 5

  Tiebreak

  He had finally fallen into a fitful sleep when Thor's growl startled him awake.

  “What is it, boy?”

  The dog was pawing at the door and ran out barking.

  “Thor, quiet!”

  Half asleep and disoriented, he leaned against the wall. Don't go to bed. He'll wake you up again. Something dark and terrible was simmering somewhere in his brain, a searing headache throbbing to the surface. A hideous shard of memory scraped his nerves. He shook his head to break loose from the nightmare.

  Jeff. Jeff was dead. Please let me sleep. I don't want to know. Jeff had killed himself. This morning, he had to go and look at his face, and sometime this week he had to bury him. Kari—

  He groaned.

  Kari. What about Kari? Every once in a while these past few weeks he'd seen the beginning of a sparkle in her eyes. Just one or two tiny fragments of crystal catching a stray bit of sunshine for a precious moment. But tonight they'd been a flat, muddied brown when she had stared at him without tears. The whole past year crystallized in frozen fury.

  Suddenly fearful, he tiptoed to her door, listening. The dry, scraping sobs had stopped. A moment later Thor let out a soft bark by the door, but when he opened it, the dog ran back into the yard and sat down a short distance away, whining urgently.

  “Knock it off, Thor! Come here!”

  Reluctantly, the dog came closer. On the driveway he sat, looked behind him, and whimpered.

  The Suburban was gone.

  Kitt stared for a moment at the empty spot where he'd parked the vehicle. What—?

  He whirled and ran back into the house.

  “Kari!”

  He jerked open the door to her room. The bed had not been slept in, and in the general chaos he couldn't tell right away what might be missing. But Kari was gone.

  “Kari, no! Kari!”

  He grabbed some clothes and ran out in the freezing night.

  It was five in the morning before he staggered back into the house. A shower didn't revive him as it usually did, and he decided to go out again and try and find her. For a few moments he debated with himself. What if she came home and he wasn't there? Not likely. He went out, Thor padding along by his side.

  After two more hours of fruitless searching he went home. What had he thought he could do on foot, his ankle still in a cast and his knee barely healed? Walk down the streets, knock on doors? Hey dude, seen a kid with curly brown hair and an attitude?

  What now? Call the cops? Linda, who listened to his account without interrupting, in the end advised him to make the call. He wasn't so sure. Would she wind up in detention? Until she'd been gone for forty-eight hours they'd do nothing, she told him. But they'd sort of keep a lookout. They'd talk to her if they spotted her. After two days, they'd look a little harder, but she'd be nothing more than one of thousands of runaways. Not a high priority.

  “She may surface on her own. It could take days. But the shock hit her pretty hard, and there's the usual guilt.”

  “What usual guilt?”

  She sighed.

  “Families always feel guilty, Kitt.”

  “You think? I kept at him to turn himself in. I knew he didn't have the guts. He's got his back against the wall and I tell him there's more coming. So he tanked.”

  “Kitt, families always wonder what they should have done or not done. You were both doing it. Kari was saying she killed her dad. You said you should have done this and that. But it was Jeff who messed up and gave up. Not you. Not Kari. Jeff. “

  ”And Kari pays the price. Again.”

  “She may have gone to a friend's house. If she did, the parents may call.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Call the police. Report that she's missing and she's got your car. And keep in touch, Kitt.”

  As she predicted, the police was less than alarmed. It was a routine. Just a kid run away from home.

  Thanksgiving was past and the sounds of Christmas were everywhere. He could hear them in the background when the police called. His car had been spotted downtown. Abandoned, out of gas, in a run-down neighborhood. After he retrieved it he drove around the area, but saw no one familiar, and finally headed north out of town toward the prison.

  The body was still in the prison morgue. If he wished to claim it, he could have a mortuary pick it up, they said, and prepare it for burial. If not, the State would arrange for interment. There were papers to sign.

  Numb, he looked down at his brother's lifeless face, and found nothing. What had he expected? A sudden infusion of comfort and understanding? This cold, stiff body that bore some superficial resemblance to his brother, that's all there was. No charisma, no pressure, no drive, no malice, no life.

  Was he alive somewhere? Was he grieving and growing in a way he never had here? When it was all over, did any sort of outcome from your life lift you to another level or hold you back? Did any growth come of it? Or was this struggle and anguish without lasting value, a step on the highway of mortality that went nowhere? Was it all irrelevant in a detached new dimension? Did life here matter at all in the end? Was there a God who embraced him and loved and taught him and made him understand? Or was he just gone, dissolved into a disintegrating speck of matter without further meaning or function or awareness?

  So this was the shell of Jeff. Had there ever been more?

  They buried him the following Monday. There was no funeral service because Kitt couldn't stand the thought of someone standing up there trying to put a good
face on things. Kari didn't come, but he comforted himself with the thought that she didn't know when and where. Alone, he walked behind the casket. The ferocity of his rage smoldered behind his dry-eyed calm as the cemetery director muttered a few generalities by the gravesite.

  Delaney and MacPhie had called from Canada and Scotland. There was a note from Rick. Zack stopped by. Dimitri and a few other players sent condolences. Danny and Tess wanted to come. Craving solitude, he told them not to. He spent his days haunting the streets, searching for Kari. Days before Christmas he tore down the tree they had put up together way early, at Kari's insistence, and he crushed the decorations, offended by their festive allure. He spent the holiday intruding on other families' celebrations, asking questions, demanding answers. If her friends knew anything, they weren't telling. Police had her officially listed as a missing person now, a runaway.

  Unseasonably warm weather brought sordid slush that matched the gloom inside him. School started but he'd missed the first few days and found it hard to focus when he did start attending. In the beginning he'd gone over every inch of Kari's room, trying to find some clues to where she might have gone, an address on an envelope, or some phone numbers. He'd cleaned up and put the unopened Christmas presents on her bed.

  Linda was supportive, but he didn't go back to see her because he couldn't afford the sessions now and what was the use? He had only one question to ask her, and he asked it the next time she called.

  “Did she ever tell you when the incest started?”

  “No. Is it important, Kitt?”

  Important? If it started after the Open … Maybe if he'd talked over his plans with Jeff in detail, compromising a little. Jeff might have told him about the money and the catastrophe hanging over his head. With Kitt playing, he'd have reached some agreement with the IRS. Kari might have been all right. Jeff and Laura might have been all right. Did I do all this? Kari raped and abandoned, the family blown apart, Jeff dead.

  He'd been so sure. Oh yes, he was going to invent a new Kitt Buchanan. It had sounded so profound. Education, then truth and wisdom. Watch out, world, the Cannon is coming. Peace and prosperity are just around the corner.