Down the Rabbit Hole

She knew that doing nothing changed nothing, and yet she couldn’t make herself get up and go to him—not this time. Her mind and emotions snapped back and forth so fast she went numb. It was her marriage, her life, and she was disengaging, withdrawing and shutting down. She felt it.

Elise crossed her thin Daria arms across her chest, but couldn’t meet the look in Hank Hill’s eyes . . . Martin’s look. “You’re right. I do shut down and run . . . Well, if he hadn’t run first, I probably would have. But I still wonder, if he hadn’t taken all the money and left, if I could have—”

“Uuuuuuuaaaaaagh!” he said, showing his teeth. “You’re chasing your tail, girl. No number of ifs will change what is. Slow down, step back and just think.” He tipped his head to the space where outfits were coming back into view. Strawberries, lemons and grapes—fruit suits. “That’s when you did all the right things; when your instincts were telling you something was wrong. That boy ain’t right. And deep down you knew it. But you didn’t want it to be true, so you didn’t listen to what your gut was telling you—that he needed to be taken out behind the barn and shot. And I’ll tell you what, that ain’t the worst part of it. No, the worst part is that when all was said and done, and you knew you were right about Jeremy, you suddenly got giblets for brains and decided you couldn’t trust yourself to trust your own good sense anymore. And that’s overthinking to the point of not thinking at all.”

“Yeah, well, where was my amazing intuition when I first met him? Or the whole time we dated . . . or during the first year of our marriage?”

“It was there—it’s always there, watching for yellow flags. Maybe there was just nothing to see. What if he wasn’t looking to fleece you in the beginning? Could be that didn’t occur to him until after he took up with that floozy—and that’s when his game started falling apart. He got sloppy, took too many chances, made too many fouls, and flags started falling all over the place.” He raised his hands palms up. “Maybe not. Maybe he was a rat bastard all along. Maybe you made a mistake. Hell, even Tom Landry made mistakes from time to time.”

“What if I keep making mistakes?”

“What if you do? And what if the mistake is seeing red flags where there aren’t any? What if it’s choking under the slightest pressure? What if it’s shutting down and running in the opposite direction if someone tries to . . . well, you know . . . love you? What if you keep living in fear or you quit and never play the game again? Isn’t that like scoring for the other team? Who wins then?”

Daria wasn’t a huge fan of sports analogies, but when Hank Hill used them they made sense. Alas.

He turned and walked into the next row of getups—nature costumes. Trees and mushrooms; fall leaves and rainbows; butterflies and snowflakes.

“I hate being lonely,” she said, barely noticing the large yellow sun partially blocking the path. “I do. Also I’m allergic to cats. So I’ll probably end up being a crazy bird woman—the one who talks to herself and feeds the pigeons in the park all day? But I’m so afraid of being hurt again that it might not be so bad if—”

This time the loud rumbling noise came from deep inside—of her. Churning, vibrating, uneven. More confused than frightened, she put her hands on her stomach and looked down, but as quickly as it had come, the reverberating and stirring died away to nothing.

“Okay. Are you ever going to tell me what that sound is, or—” She looked up and frowned for several long seconds. “Who are you supposed to be?”

CHAPTER SIX

Martin looked like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man . . . with clothes on. Legs apart, arms out, he looked like a human kaleidoscope of what appeared to be superheroes.

His arms and legs presented random bursts of green or black or red or blue sleeves and leggings; some limbs were scaled, some hairy, some metallic. Frosty, flaming and electrified. There were some with contrasting gloves and boots and some without, and some looked distinctly . . . well, turtlelike. His head and torso popped, hit and miss, body armor, mammoth muscles and capes with various caps, masks and helmets.

“I appear to be having an identity crisis,” he said, his voice a booming whisper mix that was creepier than it was cool. “Pick your favorite. Please.”

“Do I have to?”

The light in his eyes changed from uncertain to unamused. “Yes. And quickly, I feel nauseous.”

Elise offered him another rare Daria smile. It was friendly and fond. “Spidey then, I suppose. No! Wait! Superman.” She wrinkled her nose and gave her head a shake. “I don’t know . . . those Spidey-eyes . . . and Superman is, taken as a whole, less bizarre, more emotionally available and socially adept, I think.”