Twelve years ago, I went to visit my sister and her family, whom I hadn't seen for years, for Christmas in Kingston. My sister and I spent one morning visiting with a friend of hers and after the friend left my sister dive-bombed the couch and lay down, moaning that something was really wrong with her head and to call an ambulance. When the ambulance drove by the house, which was way out in the sticks, Jamie, her husband, watched it go by and didn't make any attempt to go out and flag it down, and I had to tell him to get out there and flag it down when it came back. The two, very young emergency crew came in and started asking my sister a list of questions, taking so much time that I went into the room and told them to hurry it up, we had an emergency here.
Laughing one minute with a friend delivering gifts, splayed out on the floor the next, an emergency. By the end of the day my sister was dead, an aneurysm. We were all in shock. I stayed on longer with my brother-in-law to process what had happened and in the meantime, I learned more about him and his relationship with my sister. My father had never liked his son-in-law, called him a 'bum' whenever he made reference to him, yet he wasn't a bum, he was just trifling, but we got along, had a few laughs over drinks and we all moved on with our lives. After I returned home overseas, I had a dream about him:
We were staying overnight in a cheap hotel. I sat in a chair and looked at my
brother-in-law as he lay sleeping across the other bed in the room, a functional, drab, brown. We stopped in for the night and now I couldn’t
remember where we were or where we were going. I couldn't say
why, I don't know why we were there, but an overwhelming urge overtook me as I stared down at his face against the pillow. I got up and went to the bathroom.
I came back with a hammer in my right hand and watched him again as he snored, sprawled out over his side of the room, his
glasses on the side table, a book open on his chest, his hairy legs splayed on the bed and I felt sorry that
he was now single, all alone, on his own after so many years. A widower. My
sister died, left him and now he was lost. I gripped the
hammer in my hand and stood over him. I looked at the back
of his bald head, his face turned sideways, his heavy beard, his face
streaked with the pink lines of sleep and I raised my arm and slammed his head with the hammer, drawing it quickly back up again. He
groaned and lifted his head slightly. I whacked him again and
the claw of the hammer stuck in his skull, in his forehead and his his
head went down and didn’t move again. I stood over him, still, quiet,
watching as the life slowly left his body. I tore the hammer out
of his skull and hit him again and he groaned. My brother-in-law was now my
ex-brother-in-law.
I slowly sat back on the armchair beside his bed and watched him take
his last breathe. It was visible, the body shutting down,
shrinking back into itself. Now why did you do it, what are you
doing, what’s the matter with you? I sat forward in my chair and looked at him, the hammer stuck in
his smashed forehead. Why did I do that?
A calm descended and fell into me, I felt no fear and glanced at him, the blood trickling down his forehead,
gathering and spreading under the side of his face, staining the pillow; he was
now on his side. His arms were up over his head, as if reaching for something.
To defend himself perhaps, to stop me piercing his forehead with the hammer.
I gathered up the blankets from the drab hotel bed and spread them around
his body, picked up my suitcase and left, driving off into the dark - not anywhere, just away. I had nowhere to go and
drove until I woke up beside a river and there beside the river, not
too far, a family splashed in the water. I lay on the grass and
after a few minutes, fell back to sleep and slept long and hard, the
best sleep on the best surface in the world. The
family spoke to me when I woke again and I told them that.
I was back in the car, driving, wondering if anybody was looking for
me, but no cops were on the road. But suddenly they were; cops at
the side of the road, checking license plates, looking inside cars, looking for something. I kept my head down and drove by and none noticed
until one checked the number on my plate and I saw him in my rear view,
staring, running to his car. Cops surrounded me and I wondered what
it would be like to be in jail. I had some vitamins, perhaps if I ate them all I would die before they brought me in.
What would it be like in jail? I envisioned other
women, with hammers of their own. Could I do a lifetime? Who would I
have to fight? I pulled over.
