Incident

conclusion

by R D Larson

Table of Contents
Part 1 appears
in this issue.

The crash of the chair seemed to release a hot spot in Sean’s mind. He began to talk slowly, each word hurting his throat and heart. “She made good money. I didn’t complain. I mean after all. I wasn’t giving her a life like the one she’d had. She wanted what she wanted. The way she got the money didn’t matter.”

“Did you fight about it?” Ed asked.

“No. I just didn’t think about it. The county put Mrs. Kittery in a nursing home and the conservator put her old yellow house on the market to help pay the $200 a day bill. Cripple Hill is such a flux neighborhood that the price was low.” Sean stopped, looked at his chewed fingernails, and picked at one hangnail. Then Sean goes on. “Chloe made the down payment, told her parents we were married and said she loved me. She said she wanted to have a baby right away.”

“Holy shit, what’d they say?”

“Can’t you say something else? It makes you sound stupid. Holy shit yourself.” Sean was further away from himself than ever before. He thought that maybe he wasn’t himself any more at all. Some other person maybe. He stood up. Paced around the room trying to control his words.

“She told her parents. They were in shock I think. They hadn’t heard about me or seen me much for two years. I think now that they had pretty much thought I’d gone out of Chloe’s life. They started saying they’d get it annulled when she went crazy.”

“Chloe went crazy? What happened?”

“I wasn’t there, so I heard about it second hand. Her father called me. Said she jumped her mother and knocked her down. He had to pull her off and restrain her. He finally was able to call me when she’d locked herself in the bathroom. He didn’t want to take Helene to the emergency room; it would’ve been all over the paper. When I got there, I could see Chloe had broken her mother’s nose. And when she fell, she must have broken her arm as well.”

“The hell you say! I mean here you are almost a doctor and you had to set it? And your wife attacked her own mother?”

Sean nodded. “It was nasty. I told Bob I couldn’t set it. Helene was in a lot of pain and without an x-ray, I wouldn’t know if it was a compound fracture. Or not. Helene told me to get Chloe out of there and not come back. She said she’d tell her doctor she fell on the sidewalk in the back yard.”

The other man scribbled for a bit. Tape recorder fizzled until he fixed it. Finally, Ed asked, “What did Chloe say about hurting her mother?”

“She never mentioned it and neither did I. We didn’t hear from them. Life went on. Chloe never called them again, that I know of. I actually felt sorry for her mother. I couldn’t call them either, though.”

“So did you move in to the house on Cripple Hill?”

“Yeah, in the middle of summer just before I started my residency. It took two months for Chloe to get it as she wanted it. Every day all spring she went out there, checking on the renovations. She paid for work out of her money. She didn’t discuss it with me. Except once when she said I’d like it, that we liked the same things. Then, I was busy at the hospital and studying. I felt like I was running underwater — couldn’t get it all done because I felt so slow. So I didn’t even go out to the house much.”

“So when you finally moved, did you call your in-laws?”

“NO.”

“Did they ever try to get in touch with either of you?”

“Not me. Don’t know about Chloe.” Sean felt like he was going to fall asleep.

“What was it like when you finally moved into the house? Did Chloe quit... working, you know?” Ed pressed him with the questions almost as if he sensed that Sean was drifting away.

“Yes, she quit it all, everything.” Sean said. “Just like she said. I loved the old yellow house. To me it was Chloe, it was home. I remember I was thinking, ‘Okay, we’re going to be okay now.’”

“But then things changed? What happened next?”

“Even though we had the house, I was still anxious, still taking meds for depression. I was worried without reason about Chloe, about the house. Sometimes in the morning, I would hear the delivery trucks lose traction I’d freak out, thinking what if they hit our house! The house is at the bottom of the hill, just at the turn. But there is that big oak tree, must be three hundred years old, or more. Chloe convinced me that any wayward trucks or cars would hit the tree, not the house. Also so I started a different medication and felt more like my old self, before I had so much to do.”

“Then, Chloe told me she was pregnant. Were you surprised?” Ed looked tired and Sean wanted it over.

“Not really. We’d done it all over the house and even out on the porch. It was like she couldn’t get enough of me. I never thought about being for any reason other than love. What a stupid ass I am. I just didn’t think it through. It seemed like all I did for the first month in the house was study, work and have sex with Chloe. I’m lucky I didn’t fail any classes.”

“Did you tell Chloe that you need time to rest? That your classes were difficult?”

“No, I was happy. Happy with her, with the house. Just happy. Except for being so tired.” To Sean it seemed so long ago, barely a memory.

“Did she have an easy pregnancy?”

“Pretty easy. Easy delivery for a first birth. I was there when he was born. I saw him before she did. He looked like the most perfect human being I’d ever saw. People say that when they have a kid. I did too.”

“What did you name the baby?”

“Chloe named him Kyle. She came home and one of her girlfriends came for part of the day for a week or so while I was at work and classes.”

“Did her parents come to see the baby?”

“No, she said she didn’t tell them, didn’t want them to know. I told her that I thought it was their right. But Chloe said she had the baby and he was hers. And all the rights to Kyle belong to her. She said that all the time. I had gotten use to having her to myself again. But she got used to having the baby all to herself.” Sean’s eyes glazed over. His hand trembled a little. Ed made a note.

“Did you think she was acting a little odd?”

“Not at first. A couple of weeks later I tried to find out if she had post- partum depression, but it certainly wasn’t apparent. I talked to her GYN about it. She checked her out and said she thought that Chloe was a little tired from the sudden amount of work. That I should try to give her more rest, take care of the baby more.”

“So did that help? Did she nurse — no, well, then did you help her feed him the formula? How about baths? I use to...” Ed broke off at Sean’s emphatic shaking of his head.

“NO, she wouldn’t let me touch him. She did everything. She slept with two fingers on him over the side of the travel crib. It’s one of those net fold-up kinds and she fed him, bathed him. Everything. I wasn’t allowed to hold him even. One time she came back in the bedroom with the bottle and I had picked him up. God, it was awful, she howled like some injured animal and snatched him away, saying I’d kill him if I didn’t leave him alone. When he wasn’t sleeping or she wasn’t carrying him, she sat him in his car seat. “

“Did you take her to the doctor? What did you do? I mean you could see she wasn’t normal?” Suddenly Ed’s voice was hostile.

“I tried, honestly, I did. Like I said, I even had the doctor come to the house. It was a wash. Chloe acted so natural and happy with Kyle, offering him to Dr. Fitch so she could hold him and saying how cute he was and how much he looked like me... I came off looking like the nut case, not Chloe.”

“So you were pretty much locked out?”

“I felt I was. Locked out, you know? I went to work, went to school; tried to help Chloe by cooking or washing or anything. I tried to talk some sense into her. At the six-week checkup, Kyle had put on his birth weight and was almost 7 pounds. Chloe had lost all the weight she’d gained and was anemic. Not that she told me. I asked Fitch; she told me. She also said Chloe might want to go back to work. She didn’t know what Chloe really did. I remember I kind of laughed.”

“Did you enjoy the baby? Did you resume your sexual relationship again?”

“No, and no. She always had the baby. She held him even when he was sleeping. I told her he needed to kick and wiggle but she just looked at me from under her eyebrows. It was like she couldn’t hear a thing I said.” Sean’s voice had become a significant drone. He sat slumping back on his spine in the chair.

“Then what happened? Did it come to a head?” Ed insisted into his thoughts. “That night — you know the night of the...” Sean said croakily.

“The night of the incident; rather, the accident?”

“Yeah, I was sitting at the kitchen table, reviewing for a final. For some ungodly reason the baby began to cry. I was tired, tired of school, tired of not being able to talk to Chloe, tired of everything.”

“What did you do?”

“I yelled at her to shut the damn kid up. I mean I never yell at her, never. I love — loved — her. But she couldn’t or wouldn’t shut him up. After a second, I went in there.

“What did you say to Chloe?”

“I told her to shut up her goddamn kid or I’d shut him up. I was mad and it scared me. She looked at me and laughed. She was lying on the bed with the baby beside her. That beautiful red hair was all around her head. She looked so pretty and I wanted to lie down there and kiss her. I sat on the bed.” He paused, then shuddered, his head bobbing, then just silence.

“Come on, Sean; tell me the rest of it. I’ll have to know sooner or later.”

“Read it in the paper.”

“Let me hear it. C’mon, not much more is left.”

“She slapped me so I slapped her back. But I slapped her way too hard. She bit her tongue. I started to try to calm her, told her I was sorry. I did. Say I was sorry, I mean. I grabbed her arm to keep her from leaving. I wanted to talk to her. She was freaking out. I hit her a few more times. Not hard. I kind of leaned over her. You know. So I didn’t hit her that hard. She kind of rolled away from me and grabbed up the baby. I looked at her. I was really mad now, in a rage I guess. She started for the door and I jumped up after her.”

“You tried to stop her? You chased after her?”

“Yes, but she ran, ran right out the front door. I caught her and tried to talk to her again. I guess I was yelling.”

“The DA has a witness that saw you hitting Chloe with your fist. This witness made a statement to the effect that you caught her and held her twice, hitting her in the face with your fist. Sean, were you holding Chloe so you could hit her?”

“I just wanted to talk to her. She ran — ran into the street. Didn’t look except at the last second — then she threw the baby back at me — I caught him turning, spiraling away. She ran into the street in front of the bread truck. It sounded like wet towels thrown in the tub. He hit her, killed her.” Sean’s voice breaks down and he gulps back a sob.

“The DA wants a murder one charge brought against you. They say it was a felony with two deaths occurring during the commission of a crime. They say you were holding her. That it was ‘holding against her will’, a kidnapping charge. If that happens the DA will use the ‘felony murder rule’, which would be murder in the first if a person were killed during the commission of a crime.

“No, no. I didn't kill Chloe. I love her. She's my dream girl. I love her. Love the baby.”

“Sean, I’m going to represent you and I think I can make the jury understand the way you felt, your fear and your anger. I’m going to ask the DA for a voluntary manslaughter charge instead of murder two. I’ll do what I can.” Ed got up, picked up the recorder and papers; he shoved in the chair and left the room.

Sean buried his face in his hands weeping as the pneumatic door closed with a soft swish.