Great Expectations Chapter XXXIX

To read from the beginning, click the photos on the right.

Chapter XXXIX pgs. 264-266


The solution was obvious. He’d go home. Tomorrow he’d call the sheriff. The alcohol would be out of his body by then. If she were alive, no harm no foul. If she were dead, he’d be distraught. “It’s all my fault. We had a fight, and she jumped out of the car.” Alex began practicing his story. “I started to follow her but it was dark, and she was running. She’d had a lot to drink, and she was stumbling about something terrible. ‘Keep away from me,’ she said. And she was taking awful chances running full tilt through the brush. I was afraid that if I kept chasing her she’d fall and hurt herself.” No−better yet – “she told me ‘if you don’t leave right now I’ll drown myself.’ She kept screaming ‘I’ll drown myself. I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t!’ She kept shouting it over and over. So I told her ‘Okay, have it your way. I’m leaving. You don’t have to run anymore.’ I said to her, ‘Call me tomorrow, and I’ll pick you up.’ I thought she’d be okay. There was a house just a few hundred feet down the road from where I left her. She was acting so weird and it scared me and I just wasn’t thinking very clearly.”


He saw it all. It was simple, really. He’d never be blamed. Maybe he’d answer a few difficult questions, but there’d be nothing more than that. And Alex sighed bitterly. “God, help me. I won’t do it,” he said. Instead, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed “911”.

They arrived in minutes−instantly, it seemed to Alex. First a lone patrol car with two cops. When Vivian didn’t answer their shouting, they called for backup. Several more cars arrived, then a search and rescue unit, and some volunteers with dogs. They set up floodlights bright enough to illuminate a football stadium, and began combing the area where Alex said he’d last seen Vivian. All this fuss seemed strange. Oh, he’d had plenty of fuss poured over his head during the last several years, but it was never because of something stupid that he’d done. None of these people even knew Vivian, and yet they searched as though she were someone important.

One of the first two officers drew Alex aside. He’s just a kid, thought Alex. Red hair, freckles; he could have been Opie.

“What happened here, sir?” the cop asked.

“We had a fight.” Alex wondered if the cop had a hidden microphone. And he wondered how much he was slurring the words. Was it obvious that he was drunk? He didn’t feel drunk. Suddenly everything was clear and amazingly simple. Vivian could be hurt. She could be in danger. Or she might be dead. Nothing else mattered. And that’s why people came with their dogs to climb through the brushy banks of the pond when they’d rather be sleeping. Because nothing else mattered.

“She stormed out of the car.”

“She stormed out?”

“No.” Alex stopped, shaking his head helplessly. “Wait a minute.”

“Take your time,” said the officer.

“We fought. I said, ‘maybe she’d rather walk.’ She said, maybe she would. So I pushed her out of the car.”

“Why did she say she’d rather walk?”

“Because I was trying to scare her.”

“Scare her?”

“I was…I swerved the wheel. The car fishtailed. I slammed on the brakes. I sent it skidding. It almost jumped the side of the bridge.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I was very drunk.”

The officer hesitated. He called over his partner. Then he began the words of the Miranda Rights. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right…”

Alex knew this was coming. They cuffed his hands behind him, ducked his head under the doorframe, and sat him down in the back of the patrol car. Alex wondered if he would regret his honesty after the liquor had worn off the next morning.

Great Expectations Chapter XXXIX

To read from the beginning, click the photos on the right.

Chapter XXXIX pgs. 257-258

He drove slowly until he came to the end of the road. Then he swung the car around. Damn! He must have passed her on the road. But why hadn’t she yelled? Maybe she didn’t recognize him in the dark. Or, maybe she was playing games too. So he u-turned the car and backtracked one more time looking for Vivian. This time he called to her in the darkness. “Game’s over. Where the hell are you?” Then “Damn it, Vivian, tell me where you are so we can go home and get this friggin’ evening over with.” He honked the horn. “Fine, if that’s what you want, I can just leave you here. Go ahead and spend the night in this muck. See if I care. Someone’s sure to find you tomorrow and you can get a ride home in a tuna truck or something.” And, finally, “Hey, Vivian… okay, I’m sorry…Where are you?”


She had to hear him. The small stretch of road just wasn’t that long. Why didn’t she answer? It wasn’t like Vivian to hold a grudge – to play games, to make Alex stew. No, that was his style, not hers. Besides, he held all the cards. He had the car, with its warmth, a stereo, and transportation home, while she was crouching somewhere in the bushes. So why didn’t she answer?

It took a while for Alex to admit the possibility that Vivian couldn’t answer him. That she had hit her head or had fallen into water. But it seemed so unlikely. No one ever passed out from a bump on the head, except in the movies. He dug through the car’s glove compartment, and then through the trunk looking for a flashlight, but there wasn’t one. So he set the headlights on high beam and pointed them at the stretch of bushes ahead. Then he climbed out of the car and began examining the road bit by bit. There had to be a simple explanation. Surely Vivian was okay. She hadn’t fallen that hard.

But this was Chappaquiddick. And the bridge was already home to one ghost. And Alex sensed evil in the air around him. He was cold and scared, as scared as when he’d been an eleven-year-old boy running away from home, and realizing that he didn’t have the resources he needed to run away.

Disheartened, Alex sat down on a rock. Puddin’ Creek all over again, he thought. Back then he had run away from a whipping. How simple that would have been compared to this! His wife was missing; he was responsible, and he was very drunk, and he had very unforgiving partners. They would forgive him for driving drunk, or for losing or hurting or even killing his wife. But they would never forgive him for getting caught. Suddenly he shivered violently, chilled by the misty air and the thought of his partners.

And just as on that night long ago, he was sitting by swampy water with darkness, caused more by evil than by the night. He could see himself holding that book of spells. “Remordia,” he said aloud.

The solution was obvious. He’d go home. Tomorrow he’d call the sheriff. The alcohol would be out of his body by then. If she were alive, no harm no foul. If she were dead, he’d be distraught. “It’s all my fault. We had a fight, and she jumped out of the car.” Alex began practicing his story. “I started to follow her but it was dark, and she was running. She’d had a lot to drink, and she was stumbling about something terrible. ‘Keep away from me,’ she said. And she was taking awful chances running full tilt through the brush. I was afraid that if I kept chasing her she’d fall and hurt herself.” No−better yet – “she told me ‘if you don’t leave right now I’ll drown myself.’ She kept screaming ‘I’ll drown myself. I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t!’ She kept shouting it over and over. So I told her ‘Okay, have it your way. I’m leaving. You don’t have to run anymore.’ I said to her, ‘Call me tomorrow, and I’ll pick you up.’ I thought she’d be okay. There was a house just a few hundred feet down the road from where I left her. She was acting so weird and it scared me and I just wasn’t thinking very clearly.”

He saw it all. It was simple, really. He’d never be blamed. Maybe he’d answer a few difficult questions, but there’d be nothing more than that.

Great Expectations Chapter XXXIX

To read from the beginning, click the photos on the right.

Chapter XXXIX  pgs. 256-258

He gunned the engine in neutral, engaged the motor, and the car lurched forwards. And he turned sharply towards the right.


“Please,” said Vivian.

“What?”

“Please.” He was heading in the wrong direction. Surely he knew it. He was doing it on purpose to scare her. Well, it was working. “Please take me back home.”

He raced the engine driving as fast as he dared in the direction of the inky darkness. Because he had a plan. After ten minutes, he slowed the car, looking for a road that was little more than a footpath. Finally, he saw it and turned sharply towards it. Vivian didn’t dare say anything. The path led to the infamous Ditch Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. Now Vivian’s breath came sharply as she realized where he was taking her. After all those years of marriage, he knew how to punish her. Alex chuckled recalling the newspaper headlines about Ted Kennedy’s car driving off of the road. And he swerved the car sharply causing it to skid sideways.

They were approaching the Ditch Bridge now. The night was still. The mud-brown supports − stubby post-people − cast shadows and reflections like specters in the inky waters below. They were alone on the bridge, the same bridge where a very drunk Ted Kennedy had driven off of the road, and where Mary Jo Kopechne had died on an evening much like this one.

For a moment, Alex chilled, sensing the stillness, as if ghosts inhabited the waters. He remembered an evening very long ago sitting on the bank of a creek. He had been a scared eleven-year-old back then on Halloween night, believing himself surrounded by ghosts and wicked spirits. He remembered clutching the book of spells to his body, and finding the mysterious word, Remordia, inside.

He looked over at Vivian, and he could see how pale her face was, even with the very limited amount of light. And her fear fed his courage.

“Did you say something?” he smirked and gave the wheel a quarter turn.

“Nothing. Just forget it.” She stared at the road ahead and breathed a relieved sigh as they passed the last upright, leaving the bridge and its ghost behind.

“Maybe you’d rather walk.” The road was a worn out path with a pond on one side and the ocean on the other. He swerved the car again.

“Maybe I would.”

Alex leaned across Vivian and pushed open her door. The car lurched drunkenly. He pushed at the button keeping her seatbelt fastened, but his hands shook, and he couldn’t undo the buckle.

“I’m sorry.” Vivian was reaching for the door, trying to close it. “It’s been a long night. Can we please just get home?”

“All night you made me look stupid…. Now you’re trying to tell me how to drive….”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean any of it.”

“You’re damn right you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.” At last his fingers found the button. The seat belt flew loose, and he shoved Vivian out of the car. “See how well you like it walking solo.” He laughed and gunned the engine. He gunned it again, and, as Vivian grabbed on to the doorframe, he started forward, slowly at first, then faster until Vivian was almost running to keep up with the car.

“Please, Alex, I can’t see.” Her foot twisted, and the car jerked free of her grasp, leaving Vivian staggering, and then falling backwards.

Alex drove on for another couple of minutes, letting Vivian stew in the darkness. He stopped the car, turned off the engine and listened. One cricket chirped – a forlorn rattle far, far away. Had she learned her lesson yet? The gloom sent shivers down Alex’s back, and he restarted the engine and turned back to pick up his wife.

He drove back slowly with his lights in high beam. And he turned on the radio for company against the disturbing stillness. ‘You ready to behave yourself?’ That’s what he’d say. And he’d generously forgive her for behaving foolishly. He avoided calling Vivian’s name. No sense in letting her know that he was looking for her. Let her worry a few minutes more.

But there weren’t many remarkable landmarks on that dark stretch of road, and, anyway, Alex hadn’t been paying much attention to the scenery. He came to the bridge and turned around. Minutes stretched by, and still he hadn’t found Vivian. He had counted on spotting Vivian walking along the road but, in the gloomy blackness, she was nowhere in sight.

Great Expectations Chapter XL

To read from the beginning, click the photos on the right.

Chapter XL



The dinner had begun on a horrible note. Alex and Vivian were dining with Vernon and Sophia Pomerleau and the Smythe-Huntingtons. They’d rented a private house on a tiny island just off of Martha’s Vineyard and hired a caterer. It was meant to be a posh, yet intimate party. Liquor had started flowing before the food, and Alex and Allen Smythe-Huntington were already talking loudly as the salad arrived. Vivian, Sophia, Vernon and Allen’s wife Gloria, though not as inebriated as Alex and Allen, were nevertheless working on their second cocktail.

Raising his highball glass, Allen sputtered out a toast. “We need to get out of Iraq – so that we can get on with invading Iran and Syria. We look much better bombing and winning than we do pissing on guerrilla warfare.”

Right then Vivian lost her appetite. While the rest of the table cheered, she put down her glass and dropped her eyes towards the table.

Allen’s voice was rough. “What’s the matter, Sweetheart? Is the scary old conversation too rough for you?” Here everyone at the table burst into unchecked laughter.

Vivian just stared unsure what to say. The laughter died down and everyone at the table turned to watch her discomfort. “I can’t see toasting death,” she finally said.

“Your wife sweet on Muslims, Alex?” asked Allen.

“Sweetheart needs an attitude adjustment.” Vernon pointed at Vivian with his highball glass. The ice cubes clinked in emphasis. Alex laughed. He’d drunk enough liquor that anything seemed funny, especially his wife’s discomfort.

“You’re all disgusting when you’re drunk,” said Vivian.

“Hey, Alex can’t you handle your woman?” This came from Vernon. And again the table laughed. Alex had been sipping Wild Turkey neat. As the conversation turned on him, he downed the rest of his drink with one swallow and slammed the glass on the table.

“God damn it Vivian. Shut your foul mouth and behave yourself.” He smacked her cheek with his open hand in a display of bravado.

“You show her,” said Vernon.

“Now shut the fuck up, you understand! Just don’t say anything else for the rest of the evening or you’ll know what sorry means.” Alex picked up the empty glass and slammed it hard on the table. “Barkeep! Another drink over here! Customers are dying of thirst.”

From that point on the evening deteriorated. Their conversation became more vicious, dragging itself out until two in the morning.

As Alex drove home Vivian sat silent willing Alex to stay on the road as if her concentration were steadying Alex’s driving.

And out of the corner of his eye, he could see the tension in Vivian’s face. He sensed her fear and it fed his bravado. Suddenly Alex was amused. And he swerved the car, then righted it making the back wheels spin into fishtails.

Vivian gasped aloud, and Alex laughed. “When are you going to learn to trust me?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, and Alex jerked the wheel one more time chuckling as the tires squealed. “Let’s just get home,” Vivian said finally. “We’re both tired and angry and slightly drunk. We can talk tomorrow.”

“You self-righteous cow,” said Alex. “Do you know…do you...do you have any idea who those people are? Compared to them, the President is a…a…a slimy-toad lackey. These are the ones who really run the country. Hell, they just about run the whole damn world. And they can make me very rich and, and very suc…successful or they can have my ass on a sling if my dumb-ass wife offends them, and I’ll spend the rest of my life scrubbing toilets.”

Vivian laughed − a nervous laugh. “I scrubbed toilets back in college.” The wrong thing to say, but there were no right things, and silence wasn’t working either. Alex’s speech alarmed her. Usually Alex could hold his liquor, but on this night, he was shouting and slurring words.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He stomped hard on the brake, enjoying the high-pitched scraping and the car’s crazy jerk reaction to his foot. He turned off his headlights. The road was dark.

“I’m sorry. Please let’s just get going before someone rear-ends us.”