Chapter Three
Donny and the Rabbit
Tara struggled in her sheets, as if about to embrace the woman in her dream, and vainly tried to recapture the sleep. The dream was still so sweet upon her, like honey in her veins, and she didn't want to let it go. So she calmed herself, and closed her eyes and breathed deeply, willing herself back to sleep. Yet the dream vanished like mist in her mind, until all she could remember were dim flashes: the goddess immaculate, the goddess upon a broken mound of bodies, the goddess in her arms, vainly trying to hold Tara together. The emotion however – Tara could still feel the deep ache of desire nestle deep within her bones, and she was torn; should she reflect on it again and again, on fictitious sweetness and drive herself mad, or give up the dream altogether?
Tara sighed, and looked at her watch. She hoped she hadn't slept the day through – she'd be up all night. She grimaced; it was just past seven in the evening. Her stomach growled, and Tara realised she had nothing to eat since yesterday evening in the hospice cafeteria. She got up and compulsively made her bed.
Combing the tangles of sleep from her brown hair, Tara headed down the stairs, stifling a large yawn, then yelped as she saw a large shape in her living room. Thin rays of sunlight peeked through the edges of her drapes, and she relaxed as she focused on the form of her older brother. "Finally, you're up," Donny said, in a tone both joking and deadly serious. He got up and moved to the edge of the large front room window, sharply tugging the cord to open the curtains. Tara reeled back a little as dusty evening sunshine streamed into her face.
"Hi, Donny," she said quietly. In that moment she hated her brother with a fierce intensity. He stood there in dusty coveralls, a thin red beard covering his lower chin, his deceptive baby-face that could show an amazing amount of animosity. He represented everything she hated about herself and her beginnings, the life she had tried so hard to leave behind her but never could. And yet he could never quite understand how she felt, because he didn't care to. All he knew was she was obstinate, and vain, and ignored her family obligations for reasons he couldn't understand.
"When I knocked and nobody answered, I let myself in," he explained, sitting down heavily on the couch once again and idly flipping through books she had left on the little coffee table. Thank goodness she had not left her most recent book of witchcraft on the table; he hated those little reminders of talent she had and he didn't. He continued, "I'm hungry, Tara."
Of course.
Without another word, Tara turned into her kitchen. She had leftover soup that would do for her, but Donny would want a steak and potatoes and sautéed mushrooms. Seething with anger she would never express, she got a steak from the freezer and threw it into the microwave. In the fifteen minutes it took her to cook his steak (medium rare, like always) and potatoes she had recovered her temper. And, like the lump he was, he stayed in her living room, casually flipping channels on her television until she called out, "It's ready, Donny."
She could hear his heavy grunt as he got up from the couch, then he came into the kitchen. They sat down to their respective meals, and Donny quickly asked, "Do you have any beer?"
She sighed. "No, Donny. I can get you some iced tea, if you like."
He grunted. She supposed that meant yes.
Tara hurriedly brought the iced tea from the fridge and poured them both a glass. For long minutes the silence reigned in an icy fashion as they ate, she pecking disconsolately at her food (her earlier famishment quite gone), he devouring everything in sight.
As he was mopping up the last of the bloody gravy with a piece of buttered bread, Tara finally asked, "How are things at home?"
"As well as can be," Donny replied, his mouth full. He sat expansively back and sipped his iced tea. "I don't know why you can't keep a beer in your fridge for your older brother," he complained.
"I don't drink much, Donny, you k-know that," Tara responded, blinking.
"I just think you could get your head out of your butt once in a while to realise that I'm here every month. Just once a month you could have the common courtesy to stock your fridge with a Molson."
Tara ducked her head, the surest way she knew of appeasing her brother. "You're right, I'm sorry," she said softly.
Donny merely nodded, then asked, "So when are you coming home?" He watched her splutter for a moment before continuing, "I know you can now. I stopped by the hospice on my way here. They told me that Mr. Whitney died this morning. You've got your mandatory week off. We could sure use you at home for a while."
Use you. Again Tara inwardly seethed at the words, and a slight flash of her anger came out as she replied, "W-well, they might need me for something."
"Do you honestly hate us that much?" Donny demanded, raising his voice.
And for a moment Tara wished she could answer honestly, and say yes, yes, I hate you, I never want to see you again, neither of you! But the dutiful daughter won out, like it always had to in her childhood house of thunder, and she said, "You know I don't h-hate you. It's just hard." She felt constricted and young, like she was fifteen again and being berated by father and brother, her motherly saviour exiled to the room upstairs, hidden away because of the false demon in her. Just one reason for Tara to hate both father and brother, one reason among millions.
Tense moments passed, then Donny sighed. "Whatever," he said, dismissing her. "I just wish you would remember once in a while that we're your family. Not these people you work for. Us. It won't kill you to come home once in a while."
And a deep, scared little girl's voice in Tara's head thought, oh yes, it will.
But Tara stayed silent, hunched up in her chair, twirling her spoon through her half-eaten bowl of soup. She could never tell Donny the base of her fear; to admit the things her father had done to her, half-afraid that Donny already knew, and thought it was okay. When she was little, she had sometimes thought that her brother should be her protector, her sword arm, and her shield against the big bad world. But it hadn't turned out that way. Her father had produced a little menace, much like himself, and Donny turned tormentor. With her mother alive Tara found a little solace, a little space of peace up high in the farmhouse. But with clods of dirt on a coffin Tara found freedom, and she ran away to university, then taken this job at the hospice as far from her family as she could possibly get.
She wanted nothing to do with them. And Donny knew it.
A shameful little part of her knew she would be dead without Donny, without him bringing the animal every month. For years she had tried to have the courage to do it without him, to make that final step into adulthood. But her older brother knew her better than she supposed, and once saved her life. It was when she was in nursing school, and she had taken the pain again and again, and her professors marvelled at her talents even as she began to die. A vain little part of her wished death, an end to her dreary existence. So when her brother found her on the brink of death
(but Donny it's such a little thing)
he quickly drove her to a farmer's field and forced her down by a solitary cow. He forced her hands open and watched as she used the animal the way she must and hated her for weeping afterward.
"You may not think so, Tara, but I do love you," he had yelled at her, the corpse of the cow at their feet. "How many sisters do you think I have?"
So they had made a truce. Tara would stop trying to kill herself by taking too much, and Donny would bring her an animal, once a month. And usually it was enough.
Donny pushed roughly away from the table and stomped to the front door. On the ground was a covered cage, and Tara's heart beat in both gladness and misery to see it. Donny lifted the cover and Tara could see a bedraggled black rabbit. She never knew where Donny got the animals, and part of her never wanted to know. She didn't want to think of them deflected from loving homes, where little girls would pet them and brush them and coo to them. She didn't want them to know that when they looked into her solemn blue eyes they were looking at the angel of death.
The phone rang, sending a jangle of shock and surprise through Tara's spine. She got up from the table, frowning. She had been in Los Osos for over a year, but she had few friends outside work. No one called, except for Donny and the hospice. She picked up the phone in the old-fashioned phone nook by the kitchen and said, "H-hello."
"Tara, it's Ethan. Listen, I'm sorry, but we need you to come down right away."
Tara's heart froze. Had she done something wrong? Was there a problem with Mr. Whitney at autopsy? Ethan correctly interpreted her silence and added, "There's nothing wrong, Tara. I have just received an intriguing file and I need your opinion. Can you come by?"
"Of course, Ethan, I'll be there r-right away," Tara answered, then hung up the phone.
Donny still loomed by the doorway.
"I've got to go to work, Donny," Tara said, grabbing her car keys.
He didn't move.
"Donny, I'm sorry, but I have to go," she said, her voice quaking with remembered fear.
"You are not leaving this house until you deal with this rabbit," Donny demanded, squaring himself in the doorway. "It's been a month, and I know you need it."
Tara wanted to say no, she didn't need it, but the mean little gremlin in her lower back protested, and the little stab of pain in her head agreed with the gremlin.
(All magic has consequence, Tara)
Her mother had pounded that in to her often enough when she learned that Tara had inherited the family ability. "If you're going to take it, you're going to give it away," Anna had said, time and again. "Otherwise, you'll die."
Tara looked at Donny, at the constant anger that had prematurely lined his face, and she felt a little of his frustration. He, too, was caught in a life he didn't want, but at least he wasn't cowardly enough to end it by taking his own life.
"You think I don't get it," he was saying to her. She blinked at him. "You think I'm stupid." Tara made to say no, but he continued. "You've been wanting a legitimate way to kill yourself for years. You don't think I know why you chose a hospice? For the diseased and dying? For the seriously ill? You're just hoping to rack up the blood debt, and that someday you'll be called to pay up."
Shocked, Tara opened and closed her mouth again.
"You know, I shouldn't even care any more. You're twenty-three years old; you should be able to handle your own affairs. But I know you, Tara," he accused, then wrenched open the cage and drew out the squirming black bundle of fur. "Would you take it if I didn't make you?"
Tara stared at Donny, at the rabbit. She couldn't say a word, because it was all true. A part of her mind marvelled at his reasoning, she didn't realise he was that astute.
"Now you're taking this rabbit. Right now."
Still silenced by his words, Tara merely nodded, dropped her keys and walked up to him. She took the black rabbit in her arms and immediately began sending calming rays through it. It settled somewhat, and she sat down in her favourite overstuffed paisley easy chair, which was scored with claw marks dealt by an over-enthusiastic kitten well over two years ago.
(Dead kitten. All dead.)
She stroked the rabbit and felt Donny's eyes on her. She began to sorrow for the rabbit, for the life she was about to take. Was her ability a blessing or a curse? A remembered whiff of lilies and Peter Whitney's voice came back to her, thanking her. Yes, for him a blessing. But what of the rabbit?
Tara allowed her eyes to close. She splayed her fingers over the short thick black fur of the rabbit and began to breathe slowly, deeply. She formed the tree in her mind, but for her it was an apple tree, all ripe and rosy. With a little push, she sent it deeper within herself and watched as whole branches of leaves blackened and decayed, fruit began to soften and bruise, and the entire tree seemed to wilt.
She had taken more than she realised, in Mr. Whitney's last hurrah.
Tara sharply inhaled, and the blackness, the pain, the purple began to stream from the leaves, long thin streams of tar that she funnelled through her fingers and into the body of the rabbit. She could feel the little body shuddering under her fingers.
You didn't deserve this, she thought.
But she still siphoned, and she could feel the pain of her lower back first ease, and then disappear altogether. Her tree began to radiate once again, except for one last high branch. She mentally reached for it, then gasped.
The rabbit was dead.
And there was still a whole branch left, dripping with vileness, drooping in Peter Whitney's cancer pain.
(Don't tell him, he'll make me take another)
Tara pulled out and abruptly awoke from her trance-like state. And she curled her body around the rabbit, hugged it close to her chest, and wept, like she always did.
"Thank you," she whispered to it.
Feeling energised and awake
(alive!)
she got up from the chair, still tenderly holding the dead rabbit. She finally gave it to Donny, who still stood impassively in the doorway, watching her careful murder. Without another word she gathered her keys, purse, and jacket and left her house, closing the door carefully behind her. She wouldn't look at Donny as she left. He would take the rabbit, bury it, and come back in a month with another. That's just how it worked, how it had to work.
And as Tara drove back to the hospice in the glimmering, dying sunlight, her heart was bleak within her body buzzing of vitality. Was this all she lived for? To spend her days among the diseased and dying, her nights alone in that creaking, empty house, and never a person to wonder why? Never a person to light up her life, and give her just one reason to keep on living? She thought of the woman in her dream
(for the love of this woman, you will surely die)
and her soul crumbled with despair.
That's right, Tara. It was only a dream.
This is your life.
Wake up.
