“No. No, I never laughed at you. I never . . . thought about you.” She took another step back and the floorboards creaked. She had to be close to the water’s edge now. “You were a really good boyfriend, Tommy. Really. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t think.”
Suddenly she pointed to the blade in Tommy’s fist. “What are you doing with that?”
“I’m going to get some answers out of you. I watched him leave and waited for you to come out. Then I found this.” He lifted it for the first time, pointing it at Hattie’s chest.
“Can’t you just put it down? We’ll go somewhere, anywhere you want, and we’ll talk. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, the whole truth. I promise.”
“Did you fuck him here?” he demanded, his voice rising.
She hesitated before answering. “Yes.”
“Then I want to talk right here.”
They were only a few feet apart now.
“How long have you been screwing our English teacher?”
“Since January.”
He stumbled back at that, opening up a little space between them. Hattie’s eyes flickered toward that gap and then back to his face. There was a tightly controlled panic in her features but a concentration, too, like she was working something out in her head.
“January? You’ve been sleeping with him almost since we started dating?”
“Tommy, I started dating you so I could sleep with him.” That backed him up another step and her voice picked up volume and confidence. “He didn’t want anyone to find out about us, so I got a boyfriend. An all-American, football-hero boyfriend. It was the perfect cover.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Tommy’s hands went to his head and he started rocking back and forth.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I wasn’t trying not to, either. I really didn’t give a shit about you, Tommy. It was never about you.”
Next to me, Jake shifted in his chair and whispered, “What is she doing?”
Understanding came swiftly. “She’s trying to back him up. Every time she says something terrible, he retreats. See?”
I gestured to the space between them on the screen, the escape route she was clawing at the only way she knew how.
“You.” Tommy had gotten a hold of himself and pointed the knife at her again. “I thought you were good, that you liked me. I spent so many nights thinking that I was the bad one, because I wanted . . . but you’re just like tonight. Aren’t you? You’re just like onstage.”
“What?” All concentration fell off Hattie’s face, replaced by shock. Her eyes were white circles on the screen.
“You’re that queen. That evil bitch who makes men do terrible things. It’s you, isn’t it? You . . . manipulate people.” He fumbled for the word, but then spat it out like bile. “You use them to get what you want.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jake’s hand go to his face, and then everything happened quick.
Tommy took a step forward and Hattie tried to run past him in the space she’d been working to open. As she disappeared from view, Tommy lunged after her and his arm swung around in a vicious side hook. It was a crushing, instantaneous blow. A flash of movement, a yell, a cry, and it was all over. Hattie fell backward, and for the briefest second she was visible again, mouth open, eyes wide, before hitting the floor with a muted thud.
Tommy looked paralyzed for a moment, still half crouched, and then he dropped out of view.
“Hattie? Hattie? Hattie!” He pleaded and then stood again, rocking violently.
“No, no, no, no, no, no.” The rocking got bigger and bigger. His head started shaking in time to the words. “Not Hattie. It’s not Hattie.”
He chanted the same refrain for an age, swaying in that childish, dazed way and covering his face. Then he knelt on the floor, still denying what had just happened in a voice that became strangled and oddly punctuated.
He was making her face disappear.
When he appeared again, he had her purse and the knife was gone.
“Prom. The cabin. She wants to go. Everyone’s going,” he said as he passed the camera. His face was flushed, eyes glazed and seeing nothing. A full minute went by before he came back, muttering and crying, his words unintelligible now.
Leaning down, he grabbed the knife and backed into the center of the frame. He stood still for a moment, sobbing openly by this point, then spun around as if to flee. That’s when he spotted the camera.
His crying stopped and he stared into the screen like he could see us sitting here watching him, the living transfixed by the dead. He looked down at the knife in his hand and then walked forward with a sudden purpose. The view and noises turned to a jumbled mess before everything went black.
It was a long while before either of us moved. The room blurred out of focus and I didn’t stop it, letting the grief I’d held down for the last month finally rise up and grip me. When Jake eventually got up to turn off the TV, he was good enough to look the other way.
PETER / Monday, June 9, 2008