Amanda was wrenched from her sleep by a scream.
She shot up in bed, pulling her pink comforter around her, disoriented
and frightened; she could feel her whole body shaking in shock. Blinking,
her heart beating fast, she braced herself, waiting in the stinging silence
that pervaded the room. Amanda’s mouth was dry. The windows
were frosty with an early autumn chill, and wind shook the pane.
She heard another scream, a low animalistic howl.
This time, she stumbled out of her bed, shuddering. Even the fuzzy
softness of the slippers felt cold against her feet. Putting on her
robe, she tied it quicky about her waist and opened her bedroom door.
It sounded like there was someone in the kitchen.
Slowly, Amanda descended the stairs, brushing against
the family portraits on the way down. Her slippers scuffed against
the carpet, and then flopped onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor--the
lights were on, and so bright she had to squint.
Her mother was at the kitchen table, head buried
in her hands, sobbing. She was in her favorite green bathrobe, and
her frail arms seemed hardly able to support her head. Her hair was
still in pink curlers, and her glasses had been cast aside, sprawled on
their lenses next to her. At the door was Amanda’s father.
He was busy putting on a thick red-checkered jacket, and looked very pale.
A tall man with long bushy sideburns, he was gritting his teeth and narrowed
his eyes at Amanda she entered.
“Go back to bed,” said Mr. Tower.
“What’s going on?” asked Amanda. She looked
from her mother to her father for an answer. Her fingers felt cold
and nervousness; her stomach churned sickly.
Mrs. Tower continued to cry, and Mr. Tower’s face
softened. He let out a sigh, and Amanda realized he, too, was on
the verge of tears.
“It’s Stephen.” Mr. Tower buttoned the last
clasp on his jacket, and started to pull on his gloves with preoccupied
haste.
Amanda’s eyes widened, and she pulled her nightgown
closer to her neck, taking a few more hesitant steps into the kitchen.
“Stephen?” she whispered.
Stephen was her brother. He had gone away
to the War four years ago, and came back completely mad. He had fits
of violence, cried all the time, and talked to people who weren’t there.
After trying to kill himself more than four times, the Tower family had
to commit their own son to a mental hospital. It was a shock for
everyone in the family, and a personal shame for Mr. Tower. Stephen
had been an exemplary student and child, a devoted brother, and an upstanding
citizen. But the horrors he had seen had broken him.
Amanda was frightened. “How did he get here?”
Mr. Tower’s face grew sadder. “I don’t know,
but he’s on the roof. Maggie, for Christ’s sake, will you just pick
up the phone and call the police?” he snapped at his wife.
Mrs. Tower looked up at him with red eyes puffy
with crying. “I will not call the police on my own son!” she cried,
falling into a heap of tears again.
“Amanda, please, call the police,” instructed Mr.
Tower as he opened the door to go out.
Amanda froze. She watched her mother, and
she wanted to comfort her, but all the could think about was Stephen.
Walking over to the phone, Amanda reached out her hand to take the phone
off the reciever. There was another scream. She flinched, feeling
the first sting of tears come to her eyes, and drew a sharp breath.
Mrs. Tower wiped a handkerchief across her nose, and turned.
The phonecall forgotten, Amanda shot out of the
door into the cold night, leaving her mother behind. The world outside
was pitch black, and above far the away whoosh of the highway, Amanda could
hear her father’s voice.
Staggering toward the voice, staying close to the
side of the house, Amanda caught sight of her father, trying to put a ladder
up to the roof. A wind blew shivers down her spine. She backed
up. She needed to see. Squinting , Amanda looked up to the
roof.
Huddled in a shaking heap by the dormer was a man,
knees drawn up to his chin, and long arms wrapped around his calves.
He was eggshell white, large eyes staring ahead in unseeing fright, lips
chapped and pale with fear. Amanda could hear him whimpering.
He looked dirty, and tired, there were deep shadows in his gaunt face.
Mr. Tower was talking, “Now, Stephen come now, we’ll
have you down in a minute and everything will be all right.” His
voice strained against the prospect of tears.
Stephen turned, moving quick and nervously like
a bird, and he saw Amanda. Amanda knew he was twenty two, and yet,
he looked like an old man in the yellow glow from the streetlights.
Their eyes met. Amanda felt fright crawl up the back of her neck;
the eyes were not Stephen’s. They were foreign, crazy eyes; the eyes
of a lunatic. She felt more tears rise, but couldn’t move. It had
been hard enough to see Stephen try to kill himself, but at least then,
he had been physically recognizable. This man with the eyes of a
terrified hare; this was not her brother. This was not Stephen.
Next door, Mrs. Addleson opened her front door, and
let out a gasp. She didn’t need to see much more to know what was
going on. Sighing, she shut the front door, and dialed the police.
Then, she sat herself before her window, peeking through the dark mustard
color curtains she had in her living room, to watch.
Stephen screamed again, and Amanda shuddered.
It was so much worse seeing him contort in pain and anguish than to just
hear the scream. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and
through blurred vision, saw the rotating blue and red lights of a police
car approaching down the road. Looking back up at Stephen, Amanda
noticed he was still in hospital garments, and he had a little nametag
on. He looked more like a criminal than a mental patient. His
hair had grown long, and he had a little beard. She remembered a
picture of Stephen at fourteen, one that hung in the stairway. He
wore a bright red shirt and had cropped blond hair--his gray eyes were
vibrant and smiling.
“Amanda, go inside!” yelled Mr. Tower, as he started
up the ladder.
“He’s cold,” she heard herself say, but her own
voice seemed outside her head. She put a shaking finger to her cheek.
“He must be freezing.”
It seemed to Amanda that Stephen stopped trembling
and turned to look at her. Giving a nervous smile to her brother,
she waved to him, in spite of what he had become. This was still
Stephen. Somewhere it was Stephen. “We love you, Stephen--let
Daddy take you down,” said Amanda gently. Goosebumps rose all over
her arms.
The police car skidded to a stop in the driveway,
but the rotating lights remained, casting long and short shadows on the
side of the house, bathing everything in blue and red lights. Stephen
cowered in his perch. The rotund policeman got out of his car quickly,
hand on his gun, and jogged to where Mr. Tower was.
“I’m Officer Michelson. You best let us take
care of things from here on out, Mr. Tower,” said the policeman in a firm,
uncaring voice.
“He is my son,” snapped Mr. Tower, as he ascended
another rung, eyes blazing in sorrowful determination.
Officer Michelson put out a hand, and took the material
of Mr. Tower’s checkered jacket. “You best come down. The ambulance
will be here momentarily. This is beyond your ability to deal with,
Mr. Tower.”
“Amanda, get inside,” repeated Mr. Tower.
Amanda didn’t move.
An ambulance’s siren pierced the silence of the night,
and soon, the lawn was abuzz with people. Amanda stared in numb wonder.
Where had they all come from? What had Stephen done that was so wrong?
After the ambulance, a large Cadillac arrived. An older man stepped
out of it, looking very official, with a suit and a briefcase. Amanda
recognized him as the man who was in charge of the hospital Stephen went
to. She wondered what kind of man he was to rush to an emergency
at two in the morning in a suit.
Officer Michelson was trying to coax Stephen down
off the roof, and the ambulance workers were getting a strapped gurney
ready, taking strange equipment off of the back of their truck. Mrs.
Tower was no where to be seen. The man in the suit went over to Mr.
Tower, who had come off the ladder, and was talking to him in a low voice.
Everyone was occupied, except for Amanda and Stephen.
Again, their eyes met, but this time, Amanda saw a wisp of the brother
she knew in the eyes of the madman on her roof. A glimmer of love.
She put her fingers to her lips to stifle a sob. He looked so sad.
All that reflected in his eyes was a pain, a pain that no one could understand.
Stephen wasn’t shaking. He mouthed something
to her. Amanda thought he said, “Goodbye.” He stood up, and
turned away from them, so she could only see his back.
No one had been watching Stephen but Amanda, and
she turned away. She looked down the street. There were lots
of lights on in the neighboring houses; she could see Mrs. Addleson next
door, watching. The highway rushed on in the distance, the cold light
of the stars seemed too far away to be a comfort.
Then she heard it. A sickly thud against the
earth, and the snap of bones breaking. Amanda flinched, tears falling
down her cheeks like cold rain.
The man in the suit blanched and turned around,
the ambulance workers all scurried toward the body laying prostrate near
the marigolds, Mr. Tower collapsed against the side of the house, barely
able to hold his own weight any longer.
Mr. Tower murmured, “Amanda, get inside.”
Amanda turned, and slowly made her way back into
the house. She was so cold she was numb all over.