Chapter 8 - Torment
Angela awoke feeling groggy. She must have fallen asleep while reminiscing. She could not remember at which point she fell asleep. What does it matter, she scolded herself. Then she sat up. She sat up very straight. She recalled her fight with Bruno. She remembered the knife. She gasped. It was real. It had happened. She could not escape it. She fell onto her face in the living room and cried.
The enormity of what she had done the night before and the fear and paranoia that surrounded her acceptance of her frightening sin meant that she could only crawl. She couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was an act of conscience, maybe it was an act of depression. Or maybe her life had just left her too broken, too exhausted to stand up. So she crawled. She crawled over to the kitchen. She had to check on Bruno. She had to verify whether or not he had awoken. Strangely, when she saw him there, still slumped on the floor, still exactly as he was the night before, she was somehow relieved. It was as though the final confirmation of his death made her feel better than realizing that he would survive. She hated herself for thinking this almost as much as she hated herself for killing him in the first place.
Angela sat very still, on the floor, keeping her distance from Bruno, and she watched him. Her stare was trance like. She had no thoughts, or at least no material thoughts. She just looked at him. He was so silent, so calm, so still. It was so unlike him. She thought about how everyone describes the moment someone passes away, when that person finds true peace, utter calm, and looks so rested. But she could not conjure up such thoughts. He was always so angry and now he was dead and he looked unnatural. And that was just that. Nothing more.
Then she remembered Giuseppe. She panicked. She despised herself for checking on Bruno first. What kind of a mother was she? Was her son still breathing? She got up and ran.
She found him still in bed asleep. He was breathing very quietly. She stroked his head gently, partly to check on the bruises. Then she gasped. The entire left side of his head was swollen and crimson. The lacerations crawled across his skull like rivers of blood. The skin was even broken in a couple of places. The blood was congealed and flaking in parts. Then she saw it. Then she realized the worse. His left ear was dripping blood. Slowly but surely, and the blood was emanating from inside, from deep inside his skull. She recalled stories of people beaten across the head dying, and blood coming out of their ears. She had let him die. She had left him here in his bed to die. Even now she could not force herself to call the doctor. Even now. The same fear that stopped her from standing between her son and his father’s fist for so many years now stopped her from calling the doctor in her son’s darkest hour. She froze. She didn’t know what to do.
Paralysis sometimes has a strange way of jump starting something deep, deep down in the human psyche. Of triggering some latent emotion. Of sparking a flame. And Angela snapped. She finally snapped. After twenty miserable years with that son of a bitch she snapped. And when she snapped she exploded.
She jumped up screaming and charged into the kitchen. She grabbed the corpse by its bloody lapels and she shook it. She shook it like a dog shakes it’s prey. And she didn’t stop shaking until she couldn’t remember why she was doing it. And then she spoke to him. Silently, but full of hatred. Full of an unimaginable hatred. She stared at him like a street fighter stares its opponent down and then whispered at him venomously. She reminded him of all his sins. She told him how much she hated him and how she should have done this a long time ago and she told him how she hated herself for not doing this sooner, for not stopping him earlier. For not saving her sons life and for letting him kick the breath out of their unborn daughter.
Then she fell silent. She fell very silent. For then, in that moment of whispering and hatred she finally accepted the truth. The truth that she had never accepted before but that now sank deep down to her very core. She had killed them all. She had murdered her husband, her unborn daughter and her three year old son. She was a mass murderer. That was the real truth. And as this reality sunk home, she slumped. Her entire body sank a few inches. It was as if someone had sucked the air out of her, like a deflating dinghy. Her face was the most somber face imaginable. Her eyelids never flickered. Her gaze hazed out. Her breathing slowed. Her soul died. Silence reigned. A bitter, cold silence that hung in the air for too long so as to remind her of the severity of her actions. Every one of them.
This silence remained for a while but proved only to be the lull before the storm. And what a storm. For Angela’s despicable and desperate hatred now turned on herself. Like a prize fighter she jumped to her feet with purpose. She struck a firm pose with both feet and bended knees and then she pounced. With her left and right fists she smashed into her face. Like a boxer attacking their punch bag with too much zeal, she struck her face. Left and right and left and right. Quietly, firmly, purposefully she struck and she struck and she struck some more. Until she felt the blood trickling down her nose into her mouth. Until it tasted sickly. Then she dragged herself to the kitchen. She looked at the old stone kitchen wall for a split second before throwing her head against it. Every time her head pounded the wall, she whispered “murderer”. And she must have struck the wall twenty times.
As her head swelled and throbbed, she changed tack. This next move Bruno had taught her. It always worked so well. She held her brown flowing hair in her hands and she dragged her head to their bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. She despised what she saw more than she ever imagined. She could not have hated anyone more than she hated herself. So, it was easy when she did it. And she did it harder than even he ever dared. She smashed her forehead against the mirror so hard that it cracked. And when she slowly lifted her piercing gaze back to the broken mirror she saw the blood. She saw her broken face. And she knew it was time.
In that instance, as she stood there in front of the shattered mirror she knew more than ever what to do next. The eyes said it all. They resigned themselves to what had to be done. They had resigned themselves so many times in her life, but this was different. This was final. So her eyes had life and finally had purpose. She led herself away. She took herself, slowly and finally downstairs. Like a corpse, she marched lifelessly down the steps to his garage. And like a lifeless zombie she returned to his dining room with the rope. For once she appreciated the blood red walls. For once she thanked him for the thick oak chairs. And for once she stared at the old Grimaldi family chandelier with appreciation.
It took her a while to tie a noose. In fact it took her a long while. She never had reason to tie one before, so it was bound to take a while. But in the end she did it and in the end she stood there under the chandelier, on the chair, with the noose round her neck. Finally she was doing the right thing. She welcomed her death. It was the least that she deserved. She closed her eyes and she said goodbye to everything she knew. Mostly she said goodbye to Giuseppe. She told him how sorry she was and how she would find him up in Heaven, even if she went to hell. Then she did it. Then she kicked the chair away and fell for the very last time.
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