You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.
CHAPTER 37
Patricia told Carter that Korey was on drugs. Korey was so sick and
confused from James Harris that Carter believed her immediately. It
helped that this was one of his biggest nightmares.
“This is from your side,” he said as they threw Korey’s clothes into
an overnight bag. “No one on my side of the family has ever had this
kind of problem.”
No, Patricia thought. They just murdered a man and buried his
body in the backyard.
She prayed for forgiveness. She prayed hard. Then they took Korey
to Southern Pines, the local psychiatric and substance abuse
treatment center.
“You’ll make sure she’s monitored twenty-four hours a day?”
Patricia asked the intake administrator.
Her nightmare was that Korey would do what the other children
had done. She thought of Destiny Taylor and the dental floss, Orville
Reed stepping in front of the car, Latasha Burns and the knife. They
had the money to weigh the odds in their favor, but she didn’t want
odds when it came to her daughter. She wanted a guarantee.
She tried to talk to Korey, she tried to say she was sorry, she tried
to explain things, she tried hard, but whether it was because of
James Harris or because of what they were doing to her, Korey didn’t
even acknowledge she was in the room.
“Some of them do this,” the intake administrator said. “I saw one
kid break his mother’s nose during intake. Others just shut down.”
When they got home the quiet in the house ate at Patricia,
reminding her of the damage she had done to her family. She felt a
sense of urgency. She had to finish this. She had to get her family
back and glue the pieces together before it got any worse. It was only
a matter of time before they hit a point beyond which nothing could
be fixed.
That night, Carter left to bury himself in work at his office. Half an
hour later, the phone rang. She answered.
“Where’s Korey?” James Harris asked.
“She’s sick,” Patricia said.
“She wouldn’t be sick if she were still with me,” he said. “I can
make her better.”
“I need time,” she said. “I need time to figure things out.”
“What am I supposed to do while you dither?” he asked.
“You have to be patient,” she said. “This is hard for me. It’s my
entire life. My family. It’s everything I know.”
“Think fast,” he said.
“Until the end of the month,” she said, trying to buy time.
“I’ll give you ten days,” he said, and hung up.
She tried to be around Blue as much as possible. She and Carter
asked if he had any questions, they told him it wasn’t his fault, they
said that he could see Korey in a week or two, whenever her doctors
said it was all right, but Blue barely spoke. She sat next to him while
he played games on the computer in the little study. He clattered
away on the keyboard, moving colored shapes and lines onscreen.
“What does this one do?” she asked about a button, and then
pointed to a number at the top of the monitor. “Does that mean
you’re winning? Look at your score, it’s so high.”
“That’s the amount of damage I’ve taken,” he said.
She wanted to tell him she was sorry she hadn’t protected him and
his sister better. But whenever she began, it sounded like a farewell
speech and she stopped. Let him have one more untroubled week.
Before she was ready, Saturday arrived and Patricia woke up
scared. She cleaned Korey’s room to keep herself busy, stripped her
bed, collected all her clothes off the floor and washed them, folded
them, put them back into drawers in neat stacks, ironed her dresses
and hung them up, stacked her magazines, found the cases for all her
CDs. She recovered $8.63 in change from the carpet and put it in a
jar for when Korey came home.
Around four, Carter stood in the door and watched her work.
“We have to go soon if we want to see the pregame,” he said.
They had made plans to watch the Clemson-Carolina game
downtown near the hospital with Leland and Slick’s children.
“You go on,” Patricia said. “I have things to do.”
“You sure you don’t want to come?” he asked. “It’ll be good to do
something normal. It’s morbid to sit around the house alone.”
“I need to be morbid,” she said, and gave him her “brave soldier”
smile. “Have a nice time.”
“I love you,” he said.
It took her by surprise and she faltered for a moment, thinking of
everything James Harris had told her about Carter’s out-of-town
trips and wondering how much of it was true.
“I love you, too,” she made herself say back.
He left and she waited until she heard his car back out of the
driveway, and then she got ready to die.
Patricia’s stomach felt empty. Her whole body felt drained. She felt
sick, light-headed, fluttery. Everything felt hollow, like it was all
about to float away.
In her bathroom, she put on her new black velvet dress. It felt tight
and awful and hugged her in all the wrong places and made her self-
conscious of her new curves, and then she adjusted it and pulled it
down and cinched and strapped and smoothed. It clung to her like a
black cat’s skin. She felt more naked with it on than off.
The phone rang. She answered it.
“Finally,” he said.
“I want to see you,” she said. “I made my decision.”
There was a long pause.
“And,” he prompted.
“I decided that I want someone who values me,” she said. “I’ll be at
your place by 6:30.”
Eyeliner, a bit of eyebrow pencil, mascara, some blush. She blotted
her lipstick with Kleenex and dropped red balls of tissue into the
trash. She brushed her hair, curled it just a touch to give it body, then
sprayed it with Miss Brecks. She opened her eyes and they stung
from the falling mist of hairspray droplets. She looked at herself in
the mirror and saw a woman she didn’t know. She didn’t wear
earrings or jewelry. She took off her wedding ring. She fed Ragtag,
left a note for Carter saying she’d had to run downtown to see Slick
in the hospital and she might spend the night, and left home.
Outside, a cold wind thrashed the trees. Cars lined the block, all of
them there to watch the Clemson-Carolina game at Grace’s. Bennett
was a hardcore Clemson alum, and he hosted the big get-together for
the game every year. Patricia wondered how he would deal with
everyone drinking. She wondered if he’d start again.
The wind came black and bleak off the harbor, tossing the waves
into whitecaps. She passed Alhambra Hall and looked at the far end
of the parking lot, close to the water, and saw the minivan parked
there. She could just see a few huddled shapes inside. They looked
pathetically small.
Friends, Patricia thought. Be with me now.
James Harris’s house was dark. His porch lights were off and only
a single lamp shone from his living room window. She realized he’d
done it so no one would see her come to his front door. Cars filled
every single driveway, and as she walked, a swelling of cheers
erupted from all the houses. Kickoff. The game had begun.
She knocked on the front door, and James Harris opened it, lit
from behind by the dim glow of the living room lamp, the only light
in the house. The radio purred classical music, a piano riding gentle
orchestral surges. Her heart danced inside her rib cage as he locked
the door behind her.
Neither moved, they just stood in the hall, facing each other in the
soft spill of light from the living room.
“You’ve hurt me,” she said. “You’ve scared me. You’ve hurt my
daughter. You’ve made my son a liar. You’ve hurt the people I know.
But the three years you’ve been here feel more real than the entire
twenty-five years of my marriage.”
He raised his hand and traced the side of her jaw with his fingers.
She didn’t flinch. She tried not to remember him screaming in her
face, spattering it with her daughter’s blood, her daughter who would
hurt forever because of his hunger.
“You said you made up your mind,” he said. “So. What do you
want, Patricia?”
She walked past him into the living room. She left a trace of
perfume in the air. It was a bottle of Opium she’d found while
cleaning Korey’s room. She almost never wore perfume. She stopped
in front of the mantel and turned to face him.
“I’m tired of my world being so small,” she said. “Laundry,
cooking, cleaning, silly women talking about trashy books. It’s not
enough for me anymore.”
He sat in the armchair across from her, legs spread, hands on its
arms, watching her.
“I want you to make me the way you are,” she said. Then she
lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want you to do to me what you did
to my daughter.”
He looked at her, his eyes crawling across her body, seeing all of
her, and she felt exposed, and frightened, and just a little bit aroused.
And then James Harris stood up and walked over to her and laughed
in her face.
The force of his laughter slapped her, and sent her stumbling a half
step back. The room echoed with his laughter, and it bounced crazily
off the walls, trapped, doubling and redoubling, battering at her ears.
He laughed so hard he flopped back down in his chair, looked at her
with a crazy grin on his face, and burst out laughing, again.
She didn’t know what to do. She felt small and humiliated. Finally,
his laughter rolled to a stop, leaving him short of breath.
“You must think,” he said, gasping for air, “that I’m the stupidest
person you’ve ever met. You come here, all dolled up like a hooker,
and give me this breathless story about how you want me to make
you one of the bad people? How did you get to be so arrogant?
Patricia the genius, and the rest of us are just a bunch of fools?”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I want to be here. I want to be with
you.”
This brought another wave of ugly laughter.
“You’re embarrassing yourself and you’re insulting me,” James
Harris said. “Did you think I’d believe any of this?”
“It’s not an act!” she shouted.
He grinned.
“I wondered when you’d get to righteous indignation.” He smiled.
“Look at you: Patricia Campbell, wife of Dr. Carter Campbell, mother
of Korey and Blue, debasing herself because she thinks she’s smarter
than someone who’s lived four times as long as her. See, Patricia, I
never underestimated you. If you told Slick you planned to come into
my house, I knew you came into my house. And if you got into my
house, I knew you’d gotten into my attic and found everything there
was to find. Was her license supposed to be bait? Leave it in my car
and go to the police and tell them you found it and they’d pull me
over and find it and get a search warrant? In what sad housewife’s
dream does something like that work? Those books you girls read
have really rotted your brains.”
She couldn’t make her legs stop shaking. She sat down on the
raised brick hearth. The velvet dress rode up and bunched around
her stomach and hips. She felt ridiculous.
“Then again, I moved here because you people are all so stupid,”
he said. “You’ll take anyone at face value as long as he’s white and
has money. With computers coming and all these new IDs I needed
to put down roots and you made it so easy. All I had to do was make
you think I needed help and here comes that famous Southern
hospitality. Y’all don’t like talking about money, do you? That’s low
class. But I waved some around and you all were so eager to grab it
you never asked where it came from. Now your children like me
more than they like you. Your husband is a weakling and a fool. And
here you are, dressed up like a clown, with no cards left to play. I’ve
been doing this for so long I’m always prepared for the moment
when someone tries to run me out of town, but you’ve truly surprised
me. I didn’t expect the attempt to be so sad.”
A rhythmic, wet huffing sound filled the room as Patricia bent
double and tried to breathe. She attempted to start a sentence a few
times, but kept running out of breath. Finally she said, “Make it
stop.”
From far away, she heard a chorus of faint voices shouting with
disappointment.
“I tried once,” he said. “But an artist is only as good as his
materials. I thought for sure the humiliation I inflicted on you three
years ago would make you kill yourself, but you couldn’t even do that
right.”
“Make it stop,” Patricia said. “Just make it all stop. I can’t do this
anymore. My son hates me. For the rest of his life I’ll be the crazy
woman who tried to kill herself, the one he found convulsing on the
kitchen floor. I put my daughter in a mental hospital. I have ruined
my family. I couldn’t protect them from you.”
She sat, hunched over, spitting her words at the floor, her hands
were claws digging into her knees, her voice scouring her ears like
acid.
“I thought you were filth. I thought you were an animal,” she said.
“But I’m worse. I’m nothing. I was a good nurse, I really was, and I
walked away from the one thing I loved because I wanted to be a
bride. I wanted to get married because I was terrified of being alone.
I wanted to be a good wife and a good mother, and I gave everything
I had, and it wasn’t enough. I’m not enough!”
She shouted the last words, then looked up at James Harris, her
face a grotesque mask of streaked makeup.
“My husband has no more consideration for me than a dog,” she
said. “He goes off and screws little girls with the other men and we
sit home like good little women and wash their shirts and pack their
bags for their sex trips. We keep their houses warm and clean for
when they’re ready to come home and shower off some other
woman’s perfume before tucking their children into bed. For years
I’ve pretended I don’t know where he goes, or who those girls are on
the phone, but every time he comes home, I lie there in bed beside
my husband, who doesn’t touch me, who doesn’t talk to me, who
doesn’t love me, and I pretend I can’t smell some twenty-year-old’s
body on him. Our children hate us. Look at mine. It would have been
better if a dog raised them.”
She hooked her fingers into claws and pulled them through her
hair, harrowing it into a crazed haystack, jutting out in every
direction.
“So here I am,” she said. “Giving you the last thing I have of value
and begging you to spare my daughter. Take me. Take my body. Use
me until you throw me away, but leave Korey alone. Please. Please.”
“You think you can bargain with me?” he asked. “This is some kind
of sad seduction, trading your body for your daughter’s?”
She nodded, meek and small.
“Yes.”
She sat, a long runnel of snot dangling from her nose, dripping
onto her dress. And finally, James Harris said:
“Come.”
She pushed herself up, and walked to him on shaky legs.
“Kneel,” he said, pointing to the floor.
Patricia lowered herself onto the floor at his feet. He leaned
forward and took her jaw in one big hand.
“Three years ago you tried to make a fool of me,” he said. “You
don’t get any more dignity. We’re going to finally be honest with each
other. First, I’m going to replace Carter in your life. Is that what you
want?”
She nodded, then realized he needed more. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Your son loves me already,” he said. “And your daughter belongs
to me. I’ll take you now, but she’s next. Will you do that? Will you
give me your body to buy her another year?”
“Yes,” Patricia said.
“One day it will be Blue’s turn,” he said. “But for now, I’m the
family friend who helps put your life back together after your
husband dies. Everyone will think that we just naturally felt a
powerful attraction, but you’ll know the truth: you gave up your
pathetic, miserable, broken failure of a life to accept your place at my
feet. I’m not some doctor, or lawyer, or rich mommy’s boy trying to
impress you. I am singular in this world. I am what you people make
legends from. And now I’ve turned my attention on you. When I’m
done, I’ll adopt your children and make them mine. But you’ve
bought them one more year of freedom. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
James Harris stood and walked up the stairs without looking back.
“Come,” he said over his shoulder.
After a moment, Patricia followed, only pausing on the way to
unlock the deadbolt on his front door.
In the darkness of the upstairs hall, she saw white solid walls all
around her, each one a closed door, and then she saw a black hole
like the entrance to a tomb. She walked into the master bedroom.
James Harris stood in the moonlight. He had taken off his shirt.
“Strip,” he said.
Patricia stepped out of her shoes and inhaled sharply. Standing
barefoot on the cool wooden floor made her feel naked. She couldn’t
do this, but before she could stop herself her hands were already
moving to her back.
She unzipped the dress and let it fall to the floor and stepped out of
it. Blood rushed and flowed to parts of her body that were dry,
leaving her light-headed. Her head spun and she wondered if she
would faint. The darkness seemed very close around her and the
walls seemed very far away. A fever seized her as she unsnapped her
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