The False Exit Read online

  THE FALSE

  EXIT

  SECOND IN SERIES

  Act Two-First in series

  BY

  NANCY ANNE LANE

  “There is no darkness

  but ignorance”

  -William Shakespeare

  TO MY FAVORITE AUDIENCE:

  MY READERS

  1

  Anna Marie sat on the edge of her bed feeling apprehensive but somewhat captivated by the cadence of thunder rumbling in the distance. The emerging storm cast gray shadows of gloom that clung to the walls like disheartened spirits sinking into her disposition. She stood up, flipped on the bedroom light, and sighed at the overwhelming task. It was time to remove her late husband, Kevin, and all of his belongings from the house. It had been five weeks, but the reality of his death and the destructive secret life that he’d led with another wife and child remained inconceivable.

  She would start with the closet. She stopped to look at the sky as she passed the bedroom window. A large oak tree blocked most of the view. The portion of the sky that was exposed appeared to have dropped unnaturally close to the earth. The wind livened the branches of the old tree and they scratched and thumped at the side of the house like unwanted guests knocking relentlessly at the door. She stepped into the closet and reached for the chain that turned on the light.

  Kevin’s blue robe was still on the floor where he’d carelessly dropped it. She smirked with self-deprivation. She remembered that while she was frantically packing to run from Kevin, she’d dealt with an overwhelming temptation to pick it up and place it on a proper hanger. That was the core of her personality and the dysfunctional mechanics of their relationship after twenty years of marriage.

  She lifted the bathrobe from the floor and brought it to her face. It still held remnants of his cologne. The light fragrance was like a transcendent potion that transmitted her directly back to the last time they were together. He’d pulled her close and gently pushed back a strand of hair from the side of her cheek all the while gazing into her eyes. He was a good lover. Her memory traced the drops of water still fresh from the shower as they crept down his muscular frame. The ghost of his charms encumbered her until the recollection exposed the tears she’d watched creep down the face of another woman. He was a terrible man to love. She dropped the robe and attempted to release the memories just as quickly.

  She reached for the empty tubs she’d unloaded from the storage room, stood up and stared into the closet. She studied the shirts, the jackets, the pants, and all of the colors, the patterns and the smells until they became the essence of him. With no real understanding of why, she threw herself into his clothes. She wrapped her arms around the bottom of as many of his belongings that she could possibly hold. With the hangers still in place, she lifted the garments into a heap and buried her face into a pile of what represented the closest form of anything that would ever be him again. She began to cry.

  What was this? Why? How could she weep for a man who tore apart her soul and disrupted everything that she’d known and believed to be real? How could she weep for a man who’d spent most of their marriage hiding another woman and a child from her? She knew she should not feel this way, but she did. She would miss him. No, she wouldn’t miss him; she would miss the fantasy of who she thought he was. Kevin was the man she’d loved and stood by for over twenty years, but he was also someone else. She was disheartened that this ‘someone else’ turned out to be a man that she desperately needed to abolish from the rest of her life.

  She froze. She was holding the pale green shirt that she’d given him on his birthday. He’d worn it often. He told her it was his favorite shirt. She liked the way it blended with his eyes. She thought of the day the other woman had revealed the truth by simply showing her a picture of him on her iPhone. There were no words exchanged, just a photo flashed at her in the park. All she could do was nod her head, yes. Yes, it was her Kevin. Yes, he looked happy standing in front of a lake with his arms wrapped around another woman. Yes, he looked content in his ‘favorite’ pale green shirt. It was indeed the very shirt that she’d chosen for him. It was also the very shirt that he’d chosen to wear on a vacation to a lake with another woman; another wife. A wife that he’d created a beautiful child with—a child that could have never come from her fruitless womb. A child that was facing the world alone, frightened and confused. A child whose mother was in prison because she’d killed her husband. It was all his fault.

  Just as rapidly as she’d fallen into the pile of clothes, she withdrew. How could he? She stood back and began to yank the clothes from the hangers. She tugged and pulled until her anger grew into a fit of rage. She tried to stop herself. She had no control. It was as if she were not present in her own body and an enraged spirit had become her. She stripped the entire closet of his garments and collapsed to the ground sobbing hysterically in a mound of shirts and pants and loose hangers. Rain pounded relentlessly on the roof and she felt herself drowning in the pile of what was left of him.

  When she gained control of her breath, she looked up to assess the damage. All that was left on his side of the closet were a few shirts and pants that were caught on broken wires. A small bracket haphazardly dripped with colorful ties in the back corner. Peeking out from behind the mess was a small black bag; a fanny pack. Kevin used to wear it back when they were in fashion. Lightening flashed through the room as she walked deeper into the closet. She reached for the bag and another round of thunder sent chills through her spine. She pulled the bag from the hanger and unzipped it. It was loaded with cash! She pulled the cash from the bag.

  “Oh my word, Kevin!” she said out loud. She ran her thumbs across a generous amount of tightly packed hundred dollar bills. Suddenly, as if the Kansas sky itself had vomited the storm directly over her head, thunder rattled the windows and vibrated through the walls around her. She jumped and a broken hanger caught around her ankle as she dashed out of the closet. She tried to catch herself, but the momentum from the catch of the hanger left her stumbling and threw her violently forward as she fell out of the closet. She hit her chin on the corner of the dresser and tumbled to the floor. She sat up quickly trying to process what had happened. The dampness on her neck caused her to pull her hand up to confirm her fear. She was bleeding.

  She held her hand tightly to her chin and struggled to move. Her eyes were locked on the stash of hundred dollar bills that had spilled across the room. What was this money? Why was it hidden in the closet? She wondered if she would ever pull herself off of the floor and back into the mess of this new life. A life that didn’t seem like it should belong to her. Thunder continued to rumble and crackle through the house. The lights flickered and flashed on and off as the electricity jumped in and out of the wires until she was left in the dark.

  2

  “Well darn it all to pieces! There goes my cake!” Mary hollered from the kitchen when the electricity went out.

  “Don’t worry, Grandma!” Liz replied from the dining room. “I’ll bet it’ll only be out for a few seconds.”

  “A few seconds is all it takes for a milk cake to fall!” her grandmother bellowed.

  “At least the roast is done! It’s a good thing we started it early,” Liz said as she entered the kitchen. The room glowed with the last of the early evening light.

  “Yes, but look at me. I haven’t even set my hair. If I don’t get my curlers heated up, the boys are going to think I got struck by lightning!”

  Mary had been seeing Clifford for nearly six months. Liz had been dating Gary for almost as long. Liz had stayed at her grandmother’s the night before. They’d spent the day cooking and cleaning. They were preparing for what Liz had named the ‘triple D – the double dinner date.

  In the wo
rld outside of her grandmother’s house, Liz was a twenty-three year old strong successful young woman who worked in a professional theatre. When she was with her grandmother she often regressed. It was a wonderful effect that the woman had on her. They could be childish, carefree and foolish. Liz had never known her father, and her mother died of cancer when she was young. Grandma Mary represented the solidity and maternal comfort in her life.

  The lights were out just long enough for Liz to set the dining room table and Mary to stand in front of the mirror in the darkened bathroom and complain about her thinning hair.

  “See Gammy, there you go! The triple D is back in business,” Liz said as the lights returned.

  Mary rushed to the oven and turned on the light to peek at the cake through the oven window, “Dang it!”

  “It will be fine,” Liz assured her.

  Mary continued to study the cake through the oven window and sighed. “No, it fell. I’ll have to make extra icing so that I can fill in the center. I’ll just cut it and serve it from the outside. The middle will be all gooey.”

  Liz leaned in behind her grandmother to take a look. “It looks fine to me and it smells good too!”

  “As long as the edges don’t burn. That’s usually what happens when they fall,” she said. She turned off the oven light and stood up. Thunder rumbled through the room again. “Shoot, I don’t know if it’s the power outages or these darn thunder rolls that are making my cake fall.”

  “Thunder can’t make a cake fall,” Liz said.

  “Oh, yes it can!”

  “It can?” Liz asked.

  “Sure, that’s a delicate recipe in that oven. One good roll of thunder can instantly kill a perfectly healthy hot milk cake!”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he grandmother assured her.

  “Then the thunder is the Devil!” Liz joked.

  Mary pierced her eyes at Liz and dropped her voice into a deep dark tone. “Curse the Thunder Devils!”

  “Grandma don’t!” Liz laughed, “You know I hate it when you do that demon voice!”

  She smiled at Liz and the memory of the child she once tormented. “If I’d known it was going to storm, I would have used a box cake! Those dumb things are fool proof,” she said in her natural voice. “You could fall into a volcano with one of those mixes and it will still rise to glorious perfection!”

  “Ha! You would never settled for a box cake. Not for the triple D!” Liz said.

  “That’s true. They might rise like helium balloons, but they taste like dish sponges. With all those preservatives it isn’t even real cake, if you ask me. That is why they call it,” Mary dropped into her deep voice again, “Devil’s food cake!” A sudden flash of lightening accompanied by a heavy roll of thunder lit up the room and Mary leaped with a squeal. They both laughed. “I think I nearly scared myself to death,” Mary said as she grabbed her chest.

  “You jumped!” Liz chuckled.

  “You used to wet your pants when I did that voice.”

  “Used too? I think I just did,” Liz joked.

  Mary leaned into the oven window again. “It just keeps sinking! You know, your great grandmother used to make us tip toe around the house in silence when she was baking. I’ll never forget the day your poor Uncle Carl got a whipping for slamming the front door and making her cake fall.”

  “Really? He got a whipping?” Liz asked.

  Mary crossed her arms in front of her and leaned against the oven. “Don’t you worry about that. Kids had thicker skin those days. We were always getting a whipping for something or another.”

  “He got spanked for making the cake fall?”

  “Sure! Back in the day, you didn’t even have to do anything wrong to get smacked. I once got a smack because one of my friends from school got caught smoking a cigarette outside of the drug store. I wasn’t even there!”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. I remember it perfectly. I was sitting at the table polishing the silverware. I was day dreaming and minding my own business. My mother walked up behind me and gave me a good smack me on the head. I didn’t even know my friend, Kathy, had been smoking. She simply said, ‘If I ever catch you with a cigarette in your mouth, you won’t live to see another day!’ I just rubbed my head in confusion and kept on polishing the silverware. It wasn’t until several days later that I found out why she’d even said it.”

  “That’s kind of funny. Punishment by association.”

  “I guess you could call it that. If one of your friends was learning a lesson, it was a good time for you to learn it too; just in case. I’d get a random slap upside the head and I’d ask, ‘what did I do?’ My mother would say, ‘Nothing yet, but you can put that one in the bank.” Mary reached across the counter and slipped on an oven mitt. “I have to say, it did make me think real hard before I did anything stupid. Kids these days don’t have any fear or consequences. That’s why they’re all doing stupid things!”

  Mary reached in and pulled the cake out of the oven. Liz leaned over her shoulder to inspect it.

  “It doesn’t look bad.”

  “It doesn’t look good either.” Mary popped a toothpick in the center of the cake and pulled it out quickly. She sized up the residue left on the stick and pushed it at Liz.

  “Look at this! It’s still gooey in the middle and it’s all brown on the edges.”

  Liz grabbed the toothpick and popped it in her mouth. “It tastes good!” she said.

  “It looks awful!” Mary complained. She shook her head with dissatisfaction.

  Liz was tickled by the level of disappointment her grandmother was conveying over the failed cake. She wrapped her arms around her and smiled. “Grandma, they’re going to love it! Besides, I don’t think Clifford is coming here for cake. He’s coming here to see you! He isn’t even going to notice that the cake is sunk, not one bit.”

  Mary lifted her head slowly and turned to Liz. “Baby Girl, it’s obvious that you are seriously naive about the nature of how things work at my age. This here cake is detrimental to that man’s return to my dinner table.” She gestured to herself. “You may have noticed that my superficial gift of beauty has been completely stripped away.” She threw her arms toward the stove, “This is all I have. And right now, this isn’t looking too good!”

  Liz wasn’t sure how serious her grandmother was. “I’m sure he will love you and your cake!” she said carefully.

  “You’re not hearing me, Child! Food trumps all at my age. Wait until you try that man’s green bean casserole!”

  “Grandma!” Liz teased, “I didn’t realize that you’d already taken it that far! You’ve been sharing side dishes? That sounds kind of serious.”

  Mary threw her an ornery grin and played along, “Now, now, don’t you look at your grandma like that! We started with coffee, and waited until we were sure before we got in to the side dishes. Those went very well. I may have cruised a little quickly through the main courses, but I thought I was ready—” she pulled a fake cry into her voice, “—to take on the deserts.”

  Liz giggled. She expected her grandmother to laugh with her, but Mary remained stoic.

  “Quite frankly, I’m a nervous wreck! If this house didn’t already smell like sweet vanilla, I’d dump this whole cake right into the trash. Look at it all sunken in. Now if that isn’t just an ironic reminder of what gravity can do to a woman?” Mary picked up a cloth and rinsed it in the sink. Liz watched her grandmother wipe down the perfectly clean counter tops.

  “Seriously, Gammy? You need to get a hold of yourself. Everything you ever make is amazing! I’m sure your cake will tickle his taste buds and sink into his heart! He will be back for more, regardless—” she grinned at her clever thought, “of the ‘gravity’ of the situation.”

  Mary’s demeanor suddenly changed, “Well, now that you put it that way—maybe it’s for the best. I’m not even sure I want a man hanging around me all the time. I’ve gotten used to the way things are, Liz. A flopped
cake might be the perfect balance.” She chuckled, “It’s like a good tease. It’ll keep him interested without giving him the wrong idea.” She picked up a dish towel to dry her hands and took a hard look at Liz. “What about you?”

  “What about me? Apparently you are taking things a lot quicker than I am. Gary and I haven’t even thought about dessert. Geesh Grandma! We’re still at coffee!”

  “Good girl, no dessert until you have a ring!” Mary said as she spun the towel and snapped it at Liz’s behind. “You better go get your shower while I whip up this icing.” She threw a stick of butter into a glass bowl.

  “I don’t see a ring on your finger, Gammy!” Liz teased.

  “Nope, don’t you worry about that! Things are very different at my age, young lady. Trust me it’s a whole different game, and just like everything else it moves a whole lot slower!”

  Liz started out of the kitchen and turned back. She leaned against the entrance and spoke softly—as if her words were tripping on a thin layer of ice, “Grandma, did we just have ‘the sex talk’?”

  “I hope so,” Mary answered without hesitation. She didn’t look up from the bowl. She continued to pound the butter with a fork.

  Liz left the room giggling at her grandmother. She turned back. “Can I use your bath powder?” she asked.

  “Help yourself! You know where it is.”

  Her grandmother turned on the mixer and Liz watched a cloud of powdered sugar burst into the air. She sauntered out of the kitchen and dashed up the stairs. She stopped when she heard the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it!”

  She hurried back down the steps. Mary shut off the mixer as Liz reached for the phone. She loved to answer her grandmother’s phone. It was an old push button handset that hung on the wall and had a curly cord that stretched across the entire room. She pulled the phone off the receiver and immediately started to twirl the cable. She answered the same way her grandmother had taught her as a little girl.