Ragnarök

Twenty-Three: The Resolution

When Bernadette phones that night, Mason relays the house number and asks her to call back. She does. She's at home, not on the road, her vacation having officially begun. Tomorrow she leaves for Florida.

She asks if Liza's cell came in the mail yet.

No, not yet.

She asks, "Are you watching Times Square?"

"No. Are you?" Mason fishes around for the remote.

"I do every year. Out of habit, I guess. Even though it's not the same since Dick Clark died."

Mason grunts in a noncommittal way. He has no idea who Dick Clark is, but he clicks over to ABC and finds the broadcast. A clock ticks down in the bottom-right corner. Thirty minutes until the ball is set to drop, CST. The Square is lit up like a pinball machine with its sleepless digital advertisements. Coca Cola, Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Cafe. Teeming New Yorkers and out-of-towners swarm together, waving at the airborne cameras, screaming for the glam and glitter-fueled celebrity performances.

"Any resolutions?"

"I don't know," Mason dodges. "You?"

"I want to be more open to new experiences. Take more risks, you know? Seems like I'm always swimming against the current to try and keep things stable in my life. It's exhausting. Whatever the universe throws at me, I'll try and adapt. I'll face it head-on."

"That's a good one," he says, not quite sure what she means, or how one swims against the current of life.

"I told you mine. What's yours gonna be?"

He looks around the room and finds the answer comes easily. "I'm gonna get out of this fucking town."

Mason wakes the next morning with that affirmation still ringing in his ears. In some sense, he feels like Liza was channeling him when he said it. He's taken to thinking of her as a guardian angel, because it gives him comfort, the same type of comfort Mildred must derive from knowing the Son of God died for her sins. He thinks of Liza a lot that day, in no small part because he has to set foot back in his bedroom. It's cold in there, since he always keeps the door shut and the heat can't properly circulate. The bed frame sits empty. The only evidence of habitation is the folded laundry in the dresser drawers. Mason empties his backpack of all school materials and swaps them with a few changes of clothes. In doing so, he comes across a trinket from his recent past. Two rat hides, slit down their pickle-yellow bellies, the inner flesh lettered with Sharpie.

The idea surfaces that he should go visit her grave. He ultimately thinks better of it but keeps vacillating on the matter. By this point he has to assume no felony was committed when Liza hurled the rock. There's a painfulness to this truth as well. It means their life could've been normal together, had the widow not interfered. It means things would've gone on indefinitely in much the same blissful pattern.

On some level, he understands the complexity of his relationship with Mildred. She's been his primary companionship for four years. She never abused him, never treated him unfairly or like a subhuman workhorse. She cooked for him, bought him new clothes, paid for his schooling. She tried her best to reverse whatever damaged view of humanity he might've developed in those first eleven years, to shape him into a God-fearing, hard-working, virtuous man who would one day be an asset to his community. And maybe she was even on the right path, before the illness took her.

But it did come, and as a result, it changed all the rules.

It's better for them both if he leaves. She will finally get the care she needs, the care he's deprived her of. There's enough food in the house that she'll get along fine for a week or so, until some well-wisher comes to call and finds her in her concealed mental state. He'll also leave the Plymouth's keys in plain sight. That way she can take herself out, do what she pleases, enjoy freedom for a while before they box her inside the dementia ward. He supposes the doctors will marvel at how far gone she is. She deserves to be lavished with their professional attention. She deserves to get away with her crime. If the body is ever found, suspicion will fall on him; and down the road, if he trips up and gets caught, he will not fight the charges. For one, it would be a waste of breath. Any jury worth their salt would find him culpable either way.