Vacations from Hell

“You mean before you beat me over the head?”



She started to laugh—a high, very crazy laugh that could have been an audio sample that played when you opened the DSM-IV, like one of those chips in a musical greeting card. It was a fair point. I had a good reason for beating her over the head, of course, but I thought maybe Marylou needed a moment before I launched into my explanation. She needed to own her anger, as she herself would have said if she hadn’t been going bat-shit crazy and waving a gun at us.



“Do you even know how to use that?” Gerard asked calmly.



“Oh, I think I could figure it out,” she said, spitting out a few tears as she spoke.



The tip of the rifle began to shake up and down a little.



“Marylou,” I said, trying to keep myself under control, “put the gun down. Gerard isn’t going to hurt us. He was defending us.”



“You,” she said, trying to bring her voice under control. “Sit. Both of you. Sit.”



Gerard slowly lowered himself back into the chair where he’d been bound, and I sat near the television. Marylou kept the rifle high, pointed at Gerard. Large sweat marks had appeared under his arms and on his chest. We were all sweating. It was stupidly humid.



“The Law of Suspects,” he said in a low voice. “My god. This is how eet happens.”



“Shut up,” Marylou said. “You shot him.”



“And now you,” Gerard said. “Eet’s taken you. Do not hurt your sister. You must fight eet.”



“I said shut up!”



She stepped right up to him and stuck the gun in his face. For the second time that night Gerard squarely faced death. This time he seemed calm. Maybe he was just getting used to it.



He stood, placing himself so that the barrel was pointed right at his heart.



“Shoot me,” he said, “not your sister. Let eet end here. Shoot me. Shoot me, Marylou.”



Gerard…this boy I’d only known for a few massively confusing hours, who’d tried to save me more than once…was now putting his life out for mine. Marylou had stopped shaking, and there were no more tears.



“Do eet,” he said simply. “Because eef you don’t, I’m going to take that gun from you.”



“No,” I yelled. “Gerard, don’t. Marylou, don’t!”



Marylou was trembling violently.



“I can do it to protect my sister and myself….”



“I’m not going to hurt you.”



“You son of a bitch! You killed—”



And then we both did something that will never completely make sense to me. I jumped from my chair and shoved Gerard out of the way. We fell to the floor together, me clocking my head on the edge of the table in the process. We landed on Henri’s legs (and his blood and something squishy I’d prefer not to discuss). Marylou swung and reached for the trigger. I heard a click, click, click, and I was thinking, This is the end. It ends with clicks. Click, click, click, like all the switches being turned off, all the lights going off on life.



But the click, click, click was her trying to undo the safety, which Gerard must have put on. This delay gave Gerard enough time to get to his feet and punch my poor sister in the face. One blow, right to the jaw, and she went down for the second time in about fifteen minutes.



“Oh god,” I said, rushing over to check her. “Oh god. God, she’s going to be so swollen….”



Gerard wasted no time. He took the ropes that had bound him before and tied her tight.



“Open the door,” he said as he worked.



I backed up toward the front door, but he said, “Non, non, non…the cellar door. Here.”



There was a thick, rough cellar door just on the other side of the stove. I had to jump over Henri’s body and the running streams of blood to get to it. It had a plank of wood over it to bar it closed. I lifted this off.



“What are we doing?” I asked.



“Your sister is infected. The best thing we can do for her is make sure she is locked up until morning. Quickly, before she wakes.”



There was no light switch, so I had to jump over Henri’s body again to get the flashlight from the counter, where it had miraculously missed being splattered. And jump again to get back to the door. That was three jumps over his corpse. That seemed bad. So many aspects of this seemed bad, but it’s amazing how quickly you can get used to a whole new set of circumstances.



The cellar was a raw old place, very small, with walls made of stones cemented together. It smelled like earth and was absolutely freezing cold. It looked like Henri mostly used it to develop film. There was a table of trays, shelves of chemicals, a clothesline of drying prints—most of them of trees and the mountains. There were also a few sacks of potatoes and onions, some bottles of wine, some homemade preserves on a different shelf, along with a few rounds of cheese in plastic containers. There were some shovels and garden implements in the corner. Henri’s life had been so pleasant, so normal until recently.