Coming Undone: A Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Coming Udone: A Novel

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  Coming Undone

  1

  Landon Briggs is a man's man, but even the burliest, strongest of men grow older. Their bodies begin to break down, their time runs low. Worst of all, though - the very worst of all - is that the mind begins to fail. Words slip out of the grasp, days disappear into the ether, and the faces of loved ones can become the stares of strangers in the blink of an eye.

  Landon Briggs is slowly coming undone.

  Medication doesn't always help. Sometimes it makes things worse. And sometimes, even when you know it's happening you don't stop, because what else is there to do? You have to try the meds, because losing the people you love while they are standing right in front of you is unbearable. Even more terrifying, you know that one of these days, you'll lose them, and you won't be able to get them back.

  In the car, coming home from the latest appointment, Landon watches his wife, Melody, as she navigates the sparse small-town traffic. She’s always so classy - soft blue floral dress, hair done in loose curls that tickle at her ears - she feels him watching. She looks over and offers the same encouraging smile that she’s been offering for forty years now, all through their blue-collar lives.

  Her hope cuts him to the bone.

  He knew it wasn’t going to work, even with the first dose, right there in Dr. Bracer's chilly office, amid the certificates and crowded furniture. He knew. But he couldn’t say so, and the doctor would scold, so he took the pills and he swallowed them with a small metal can of juice from the vending machine, and he promised to take the next dose and the next. Satisfied, Bracer let Melody take him home.

  So Landon is trying, for Melody’s sake. She has that cautious hope in her eyes again. Maybe this time, she's thinking. Maybe this one will work, and I'll get to be with my Landon again. His heart burns in his chest, because he loves her so much and the words to express it are so foreign to him that he can never say so. Not in any sort of way that makes sense. She tempers the edges of his life, makes the world a softer, kinder place. He's spent decades being simply grateful for her love.

  She runs through the Wendy's drive-through, getting them both bacon cheeseburgers and salads. Landon will eat both cheeseburgers, Melody will eat both salads. It's the way they've always done it.

  How is it that he can remember silly details like this and lose the big picture items, like the names of his boys and the fact that he has grandchildren? How does he know how the movie ends, but he can't remember where he parked his truck in the theater lot? How does he understand the nuance and nutrition of different kinds of horse feed but can't explain why the clerk at the farm store makes him nervous?

  It isn't fair, this patchwork of holes in his mind. It isn't fair, and it sure as hell isn't useful.

  They get home after two, and Landon wolfs down both cheeseburgers. Then he announces that he's going to take a nap. He kisses Melody on the cheek, tells her again that he's fine, and goes to lie down across the bedspread, scanning his body for any physical warning signs that the pills are doing something wonky to his guts. He drifts off in the midst of wondering if Melody is going to make that cherry pie she promised him.

  He dreams about stepping stones, for some reason.

  When he wakes up the sun is slanted across the side table and across his legs. He blinks and stares at the lazily spinning ceiling fan, sending a breeze across his face. The little pull-chain is tap, tap, tapping quietly in time with the blades. He turns his head and realizes that it must be nearly seven in the evening. The day has taken on that hazy, hot summer blue. He breathes in, breathes out, feels his chest rise and fall. There is a twinge there, near his right shoulder.

  It's the left one that signifies a heart attack, isn't it?

  Movement from the doorway catches his eye. A woman in a blue dress walks by. She's pretty. A little plump, maybe his age. A short little creature, compared to him, but he has always liked short women.

  She turns her head as she passes the doorway. "Feeling better?" she asks him.

  He smiles a little. Offers her a nod. Why is she in his house?

  He looks around. Is this his house? The furniture configuration looks right, and he knows he has seen that mirror on the far wall before. He stands up and goes to look more closely. It's large, with an ornate bronze frame. Not his taste, but maybe it was a gift.

  He looks toward the door again. The woman has come back. She's leaning there against the door frame, with a hand resting gently on the wood. Her blue dress swirls a little as she moves, and her smile is gone. She looks at him sadly.

  She seems to care, he thinks. "Do you work for me?" he asks her.

  She bites her lip and turns her face away, toward the window. "Yes," she whispers. "Your supper will be ready in half an hour."

  "Thank you." He watches her move away again, hears her footsteps whisper across the hall carpet as she walks to some other part of the house. He starts to follow, but her sadness has made him nervous. Why is she sad? Did he say something wrong? He isn't sure, but he doesn't think he's a mean employer, is he?

  Sighing, he decides to go outside for a few minutes. Maybe the fresh air will clear his head and make him feel better.

  He follows the woman's path down the hall and sees her beside a large white stove in a kitchen that looks unfamiliar to him. Of course, it has to be his. This has to be his house, otherwise why would he have been sleeping in it? While he ponders this, his feet act of their own accord, turning away from the woman and the kitchen and carrying him through a living room with sand-colored furniture and out a door to a wide porch that wraps around the corner of the house and disappears. A swing beckons, but he doesn't want to sit. He wants to look around a little.

  The air is humid and hot, like there’s a late-summer storm moving in. The clouds bunch up in the south, but the sky here is still clear for now.

  Just as he takes a step, the woman is behind him again. "I brought you a drink," she says. Her hair is a soft auburn cloud around her fine-featured face. She's very pretty. "Tea."

  He sees the sweating glass, takes it, smiles at her. His hand trembles a little. So does hers. She tries to smile back, but her eyes tell him she's struggling inside. When he pulls away, his fingers brush hers. Static electricity makes him gasp. He chuckles at himself and holds on tighter to the glass. Then he looks at her again.

  Melody is standing here looking worried. She looks worried a lot these days. He takes the tea, then takes her free hand in his and squeezes it. "It's a beautiful afternoon, my lady. How about a walk?"

  Her face clears and she squeezes back. "I've got sauce on the stove," she says. "Can we go after supper?"

  "Whatever you want." He watches her turn and go back into the house, wondering what had happened to make her so upset on such a nice summer evening. He hates to see her worried, so much that he's spent the better part of forty years working hard so that she would never have to worry about anything.

  He follows the verandah to the rear of the house and sits down on the steps. He likes to sit here and watch the woods at the back of their property. Sometimes, if he sits for a while and gets lucky, he'll see a doe poke her head out of the
foliage and sniff around before retreating into the shadows again. It's a treat. Once a doe and two fawns ventured out of the trees and into the wide back yard, coming close to the house before something startled them and sent them running.

  Tonight, nothing is moving. The last of the sun's rays splinters the twilight. He has downed half the tea when he realizes that he shouldn't be out here.

  The last thing he remembers was coming home from the doctor's office and lying down for a nap.

  He looks down. He's wearing the same clothes he wore to Bracer's office. So is Melody. It hasn't been long, then. Not days.

  He's had an episode. That is Bracer's word for it. The realization is like a punch to the gut.

  Landon calls them holes, and he hates that he can't control what is happening to his mind. He hates that he sometimes moves and lives without knowing what it is he does. He hates that someone else seems to be taking over his brain and stealing his body. What if he does something bad and doesn't even know it?

  He only voiced those concerns once, to Melody. She laughed and said, "Landon Briggs, you don't have a mean bone in your body. Why would you worry about that?"

  "But I'm not me when that happens," he'd tried to explain. "What if I got mad and hurt you, somehow?" It was his biggest fear - she was so small, so delicate compared to him. Even when his mind was solid he had always worried about hurting her accidentally.

  She had stopped laughing and tried to make him feel better, telling him that even during his episodes she trusted that he was a good man, deep down, and good men didn't become bad men just because of a few wayward thoughts or lost memories.

  But now, sitting on the porch steps and looking out over the lawn, he wonders what happened this afternoon, when he wasn't himself. She'd looked worried.

  The sound of a car engine cuts into his musing. He turns his head and realizes someone is coming down the little lane that is their driveway. The house sits a few hundred yards off the highway, on a large wooded lot. Landon can always tell when someone is coming, long before a car swings around the final turn. He likes that about this property and he's managed to hang onto all fifteen acres, even as the city built closer and closer to their land over the years. It isn't the thousand-acre farm he'd grown up on, but it is his own little slice of nature and he was well-paid for the acres lost.

  He stands up and walks down the steps and around the side of the house to the driveway. His son is just pulling in, his black pickup flashing in the last of the evening light. Landon raises his hand and waves. Peter.

  No...James. It's James. He shakes his head and goes to say hello.

  James grins when he catches sight of his dad, and meets him halfway down the walk. He’s nearly as tall as Landon, and muscular from his work as a landscaper. They hug each other in that back-pounding way that men do, and Landon is happy to see his eldest son. James is a good kid, the more stable of their two boys. Peter is a good man, too, he's just a little wild for his own good.

  Not that Landon can say anything about that. He'd been a little wild, too, before Melody settled him.

  James pulls a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and shakes one out. While he's fishing in his jeans pocket for a lighter, Landon reaches out and plucks one out for himself.

  James freezes. "You don't smoke, Dad."

  Landon looks down at the cigarette. He doesn't smoke. Why did he do that?

  More importantly, how does he cover his actions so that James doesn't start to wonder about his dad's sanity? Landon might not be able to hide his...problems...from Melody, but he tries his best to hide them from the boys, because boys needed a strong father, no matter how big they get.

  "You don't know everything about your old man, now, do you?" he asks, mustering a grin and sticking the cigarette between his lips.

  James looks amused. "I guess not." He holds out the lighter and lights Landon's cigarette. "Pete will be along in a while."

  Landon's eyebrows come up and he takes a drag off the butt. This isn't his first cigarette, but he'd never picked up the habit. It burns his tongue, burns his throat. "What's the occasion?"

  "You'll see," James tells him, then turns when the screen door at the front of the house squeaks open and Melody comes running down the stairs, her dress whipping behind her.

  She throws herself into his arms with the squeal of a girl, making both men laugh. James catches her, whirls her around and kisses her on top of the head before setting her back on her feet. "Evening, Mama," he says, keeping one hand on her shoulder to steady her.

  She glances around him, toward the truck. "Where are my grandbabies?" she asks him, planting her hands on her round hips.

  "At home with their mother, as far as I know," he teases.

  "You'll stay for supper?" she asks. For as long as Landon can remember, she has made extra for supper. "In case someone drops by," she explains when he asks. "You never know who might need a homemade meal."

  She'd been right about that a few times over the years.

  Now she takes James's hand and leads him toward the front door. He tugs back, slowing her walk while he finishes his cigarette. He knows Melody's rule is no smoking in the house. It's a good rule. Landon doesn't like that the boys smoke - it isn't good for them - but he is glad they keep it away from their own kids, so he doesn't say anything when they light up here at the house. One day, when they stop being so hard-headed, they'll quit.

  Landon understands that all men eventually come to terms with their own mortality, whether they like it or not. He flicks the fire off his own cigarette, stuffs the butt into his pocket, and follows them inside, leaving behind the buzz of late summer bugs and hot evening sun.

  2

  James is teasing his mother about something and sticking a finger into her sauce pot for a taste when they hear Peter pull up outside. He comes in looking wiry, strong, and dusty from work on a construction site. He will always be the boy, Landon thinks, even though he is a man. He will always be the one they worry about more, the one they need to help, the one who feels like a teenager even at twenty-five.

  At nearly thirty, James already owns his own landscaping business. He employs fourteen good men here in southern Harrison County, and Landon is properly proud of him. Peter has no such ambition, although he's a talented, creative guy who enjoys working with wood. He makes a few things for sale here and there, mostly furniture and trinket boxes. He just can't be bothered to make a real go of it. "Why would I want to be in charge?" he always says when Landon or Melody asks. "Too much trouble. Look at James - riding herd on a bunch of lawnmowers every day. No thanks."

  In a way, Landon understands. His own career - he'd been an electrician for forty years - seems like a simple thing now, after watching James handle all the worry and drama of running a company. Peter, like his dad, doesn't have the temperament for people-dealing.

  On the other hand, Landon has a hope that Peter will find a niche that can be his own, because depending on someone else for work isn't the safest way to live. Where James could always make a way, drum up new customers, and figure out the next best step, Peter has to depend on bosses and owners and other men, and none of them give the slightest damn about his future.

  Mostly, Landon is glad that his own working days are behind him. He's too tired to keep up the good fight.

  The presence of the boys puts Melody in high spirits with their silly teasing and rowdy laughter. Landon is glad to see it, after her worry earlier. She keeps everything running here at home, so she deserves the happiness that comes with having her boys in the house. By the time supper is served, her eyes are teary from laughing at some story Peter is telling her about one of his co-workers and a lost hammer.

  Even so, there is an expectant undercurrent in the air. The boys are up to something, but Landon can't figure out what.

  They eat out back, at the large round picnic table on the corner of the veranda. Landon built it years ago, with Peter's help, and he can't count how many family suppers the old table has
seen. It's big enough to serve all four of them, James's wife Janice, and both grandbabies. There is even room left over for more, in case Peter ever marries and has little ones of his own.

  Landon isn't holding his breath for that, though. There's no hurry, if it ever happens.

  He catches the boys stealing glances at one another all through supper, when they think no one is looking. What are they up to? He decides after a while to wait them out. They'll either say something or they won't, and he supposes they'll say something. Why else are they here?

  It's after supper, when Melody has cut and served the cherry pie, when James speaks up. "What are your plans for next weekend, Dad?" he asks. He and Peter are both watching Landon closely. Expectantly.

  Landon stops with a forkful of pie halfway to his lips and looks at both of them, trying to figure out what they've got up their sleeve before he answers. They, in turn, have shielded gazes. "Why?" he asks finally, just so he can finish his bite of pie. Melody's cherry pies are prize-worthy, and she's proven it at the local county fairs over the years.

  "We want to have an adventure, Dad," James says, using a phrase from their childhood. Peter smirks. “You know, just us guys.”

  The phrase is one that Landon himself has used a hundred times over the years. It always means one specific thing to the boys - a camping trip. His eyebrows come up, but before he can answer Melody is on her feet, clearing the table. She doesn't say a word, but there is fire in her eyes and her lips are a tight, pale line. She grabs up a stack of plates and goes inside. Landon watches her go and then turns back to the boys again.

  "I don't think your mother likes the idea," he says.

  James chuckles. "You think?"

  Peter shakes his head. "She's too protective of you, you know. Do you ever go anywhere without her?"

  James shoots him a look and jabs him in the ribs with an elbow. Peter grunts but doesn't take his eyes off Landon.

  He has a point. Landon doesn't go many places without Melody these days, but there is a reason for that - a reason he isn't willing to share with his sons. Even the grocery store seems dangerous, when he's afraid of forgetting where he lives.