Quite Alarming

Writing yesterday’s post about the visit from the FBI reminded me of another “how the hell could you have gotten us into this” moment during that era.

Before we get started with the story, I have to tell you that at the beginning of our little family drama, Joey was also married, to a man we’ll call “Jack” (as in Ass).

The phone rang late one night on a weekend when the children were visiting The Wasband at his new little abode. When I answered, a rather shrill version of The Wasband’s voice rang in my ear.

“Jerri, is everything all right over there?”

“Of course. Why?” I asked suspiciously. No way in hell he was calling to check on my health and well-being.

“Jack just left my house. He said he's coming over there. He’s pretty drunk.”

Silence.

“And he has a gun.”

My stomach plummeted to somewhere near my ankles.

“What did you say?” I gasped.

“He has a gun. But don’t worry. I have a gun here, too,” The Wasband boasted.

“What the hell do you mean you have a gun? My children are there. And both of you assholes have guns?" I screeched into the phone. I couldn't think of a single thing scarier than two angry idiots with guns. Near. My. Children.

“Calm down, Jerri,” came his condescending reply. He sounded—as always—as though the fault for this situation were mine. “He just found out about me and Joey, and he’s pretty upset.”

“Okay, I get why he’s mad at you, but why is he coming over here?” I asked.

“He knows you’ve known for quite a while, and he’s really mad that you didn’t tell him,” The Wasband replied.

He's mad that I didn't tell him. He's mad that I didn't tell him. I kept repeating the phrase to myself as though it would somehow make sense if I thought about it long enough.

First things first.

“Are the kids all right?” I demanded.

“They’re asleep, Jerri,” came the same condescending tone. He had a way of drawing out the second syllable that made my name sound like the vilest of cuss words.

“We have to get them out of there. What if he comes back?” I demanded.

“And where should they go? Not to your house, that’s where he’s headed,” came the self-righteous reply.

The world was tilting on its axis and I truly believed I might slide right off the edge. This was what our lives had become. A drunken man with a gun was running around in the night, looking for me.

“Well, we can’t just leave them there in the line of fire.” I was back to screeching.

“Look, the kids are fine. I’m going to stay up until morning. I’m in the foyer with a gun in my lap. If he comes in here, he’ll never to get to the kids’ rooms. I promise you that.”

Boy, did that make me feel better. A picture of The Wasband, sitting in the tiny foyer of his 40's bungalow with a gun in his lap leaped into my head. I could see his dark brown hair resting against a white wall and his pajama-clad butt resting on the mosaic-tile floor. I could also see the flash of temper in his eyes. His temper and a gun were not a good combination.

The Wasband's voice drew me out of my frightened—and frightening—reverie.

“Just set the alarm and go to sleep. If you see or hear anything, call the police.”

“How could you get us mixed up with people like this, you son-of-a-bitch?” I was shrieking into the phone, but the line was dead.

He’d hung up on me. The bastard had hung up on me. Unbelievable.

There was nothing to do except set the alarm, and I didn’t have the vaguest notion of how to do that. A short search turned up the owner’s manual, which I read by flashlight, afraid to turn on the lights.

Standing in front of the alarm panel in my closet, I tried to push buttons as instructed, but the tears in my eyes made it hard to see the numbers. My hands were shaking too badly to get through the sequence correctly, anyway. After five or six tries, I was pretty sure I’d gotten the job done.

I stepped out into my bedroom and dove to the floor. My windows, the ones kept open in decent weather, faced the street. The screens and the sheer curtains covering the lower half of the windows were all that stood between me and whatever lurked outside. I tried to make myself go over and crank the windows closed, but I absolutely could not move toward them.

The light of the full moon streamed in, and the shadows created by the fluttering sheers were enough to scare me out of my ever-lovin’ mind. There was no way I could move even an inch closer to those windows.

I crawled out of the room and down the hall to my daughter’s bedroom, which faced the back of the house. I closed the door behind me and scrambled up into her double bed.

Our lives were once as pretty—on the surface, anyway—as her beautiful room. I had made the comforter cover, bed skirt, and pillow shams myself, from the sweetest pink prints you’ve ever seen. I’d recently added a chair rail, built shelves, and painted the whole room myself. (More evidence of the home improvement obsession that was my only link to sanity during those days.)

Although pretty things comfort me, there was no comfort in that room that night, only fear. Fear so cold that it numbed my limbs as it circulated through my veins, mixed with adrenaline and dread.

I desperately wanted to look outside, to see if Jack was out there, but there was no way I’d move from the relative safety of the back side of the house. I perched in the middle of the bed, that sweet comforter over my head, until my heartbeat stopped drumming in my ears. Probably 20 or 30 minutes, I’d guess.

All at once, all hell broke loose. The alarm sirens blared, lights flashed, and I screamed bloody murder. The failure of my “stay-in-The-Girl’s-bedroom" plan became immediately apparent as I realized my 6-year-old had no phone. No fucking phone from which to call the police.

Damn. Damn. Damn. I had to go out into the hall, no matter how scared I was. I had to get to a goddamned phone.

I opened the door and started to crawl out, only to come eye-to-eye with my beloved Wheaton Terrier, Muffin, lumbering up the open staircase in front of The Girl’s bedroom. Nothing—and I do mean nothing startled that dog. In the middle of the shrieking (the alarm’s and mine) and flashing, he was as calm as ever.

Not me. I was not calm. Not calm at all. But even in my state of panic, I realized that Muffin was the reason for the bedlam. He must have come looking for me, and it was his movement that set off the motion detectors in the hallway.

I rolled onto my back and cried for several moments while Muffin licked my face. This simply could not be my life. But it was, and at that moment in my life, my security alarm was waking the entire neighborhood.

I stood up, turned on a light, and walked to my room, where I opened the alarm panel and turned off the system. Then I picked up the phone and called the police to let them know it was a false alarm and to ask that they drive by the house anyway.

With those tasks completed, I sat down in the floor and laughed hysterically. The dog. The dog. My harmless Muffin had nearly given me a heart attack. It was all so ridiculous.

I never went back to bed that night, but I didn’t hide in The Girl’s room anymore, either. Jack be damned. If he—or anyone else—was going to attack me, they’d have to come at my face. In the light.