Something Wild

by Hanna Halperin

  “You must be starving,” says Lorraine, tucking a strand of hair behind Tanya’s ear.

  “I snacked in the car,” Tanya says, recoiling just the tiniest bit from their mother’s touch. Nessa waits for Tanya to mention Lorraine’s braces, but Tanya doesn’t say anything. Her sister seems to be avoiding looking at their mother at all.

  When they go inside, Jesse appears in the front hall. “Hi there, Tanya,” he says.

  She shoots him a one-second smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Hey.”

  “Want me to grab that?” He reaches for her suitcase.

  Tanya holds tight to her bag. “I got it.”

  A reaction flickers across Jesse’s face before disappearing. “How was the trip?”

  “Long and uneventful.” Tanya pushes in the retractable handle of her rolling suitcase with a click and starts to make her way upstairs. “Ness,” she says over her shoulder, her voice warming. “Want to come up?”

  * * *

  —

  NESSA AND TANYA DRIVE to the Walgreens on Mass Ave. to fill Eitan’s prescription. It’s nice being in the car with her sister, driving past the Capitol Theatre and Quebrada Bakery; the convenience store on the corner of Mass Ave. and Everett where they used to walk to as kids to buy candy. Most things are the same. Mass Ave. is lined with apartment buildings, a mix of prewar and affordable housing—boxy buildings from the 1960s and ’70s. Colonial houses interspersed among the dozens of small businesses.

  They drive past the side street leading down to Spy Pond, where when they were little, their mother and father used to take them on picnics. Then, past their old high school—big, brick, and domineering with white columns and a steeple on top like a church. Nessa glances at Tanya, but her sister does not look over to the school on their right, not even for a second.

  Nessa takes the first dose of antibiotics in the car, in the Walgreens parking lot.

  “You really should go see your doctor.”

  “I know what a UTI feels like.”

  “Yeah, but it matters what kind of antibiotics you take.”

  “Did Eitan not want to write the prescription or something?”

  Tanya regards Nessa with unmasked exasperation. She seems to be deciding what to say next. “The responsible thing is to go to the doctor, Nessa.”

  “What I really need to do is start peeing after sex.”

  Tanya looks out the window and Nessa wishes she hadn’t said the last thing about sex.

  “That place looks nice,” Tanya says.

  “What?”

  “That café.” Tanya gestures out the window, across the street. “With the yellow awning. Mom’s leaving Arlington just as it’s getting kind of cute.”

  Nessa looks at the darkened storefront with the pretty yellow awning, Louisa’s in white script across the front. She can’t imagine her mother and Jesse in a coffee shop like Louisa’s, one that sells five-dollar cookies and plays mellow, indie music, a bulletin board by the front counter advertising yoga and guitar lessons.

  It’s the kind of place her mother might admire from outside the window, but if she suggested going in, Jesse would scoff.

  “I could make you better coffee in our own goddamn kitchen,” he’d say.

  “It’s for the atmosphere, Jesse,” her mother would protest.

  “I’ll give you atmosphere, baby.” Then Jesse would put his arm around her and squeeze tight, pulling Lorraine away from the shop.

  Those were the kinds of conversations they had. She knew that Tanya found them cheesy—maybe disgusting. It reminded Nessa of teenage love. Always showing off for one another. Always flirting, always fighting.

  “So what’s his name again?” Tanya asks. “This guy?”

  “Henry.”

  “Are you guys in love?” Tanya smiles at her sarcastically.

  “I don’t love him,” Nessa says. “Sometimes I don’t even like him.”

  “What don’t you like about him?”

  “He’s kind of gross, actually. He picks his nose in front of me,” Nessa says. “I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. Once I saw him wipe it underneath the seat in my car.”

  Tanya laughs. “Ew, Nessa. Did you call him out?”

  “No, we don’t have that kind of relationship yet.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THEY GET HOME, Nessa and Tanya and Lorraine sit on the front stoop together. The sun has set and the sky is a deep blue, punctuated by the milky streetlights up and down Winter. Across the street, a neighbor’s big-screen TV flashes color in the downstairs window. When Lorraine lights a cigarette, Tanya leans back, fanning the air in front of her. “Mom, you have to quit.” When Lorraine doesn’t respond, Tanya shields her nose and mouth with her hands. “It’s selfish to smoke.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’re essentially committing suicide. We want you around. We don’t want to watch you—”

  “Jesus, Tanya,” Nessa says. “Chill.” Nessa tends to forget how critical her sister is, how quick Tanya is to feel disappointed by everyone, as though each of their flaws is a direct and personal attack on her.

  Lorraine puts her cigarette out on the porch step and tosses it in one of the flowerpots. “How’s your dad?” she asks.

  “He’s good,” Tanya says, her voice rising in pitch, content to change the subject now that the cigarette is out. “They’re all doing well. They’re going on a vacation soon, to Maine or something. Ben broke his arm a few months ago, but he just got his cast off.”

  Hurt tugs at Nessa. She hadn’t known about their half brother’s arm or the vacation in Maine.

  “It’s so interesting, to imagine your father having a son,” Lorraine muses. “I bet he’s good with him. Jonathan’s always been confident enough to not get competitive with other males. I always liked that about him.”

  “Is Jesse like that?” Nessa asks, though she knows the answer.

  “Jesse gets competitive with the mailman, for God’s sake. Why does he always wave at you like that?” Lorraine mimics, shaking her head. “Jesus Christ. I’m glad you two are girls. He adores you.”

  “What about Eitan?” Nessa asks.

  “He’s secure,” Tanya answers shortly. She seems bored by the conversation, or annoyed with it; Nessa can’t tell which.

  “He’s so handsome, Eitan,” Lorraine says to Tanya, in a low, confiding voice, like a girl at a sleepover.

  Tanya doesn’t respond, but she leans her head on Lorraine’s shoulder and closes her eyes. “I’m tired, Mom,” she says, suddenly soft and childlike, and Lorraine puts her arm around Tanya’s shoulders. Nessa envies that about her sister, Tanya’s ability to be nurtured by Lorraine.

  “I’m so happy my girls are home,” Lorraine says. She puts an arm around Nessa, too, and Nessa sinks into it, and for a moment there’s a feeling of closeness, like they might all sit there for a while—but then Tanya lifts her head and says, “It’s too cold out here.”

  “Go inside, honeys,” Lorraine says. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

  Nessa and Tanya stand up and go inside, leaving Lorraine on the steps so she can smoke in peace.

  That night, Nessa wakes up suddenly from a nightmare—it’s a recurring tooth one, where her teeth crumble in her mouth and she spits the bones, practically dust, into her palm. She sits up, swiping her tongue along her teeth, which are still there, tight and whole in her gums.

  The house is humming with something—Nessa doesn’t know what, but she realizes then that she was woken by a loud noise. A door slamming. Next to her, Tanya is asleep, curled on her side, holding a pillow. Nessa eases out of bed and makes her way down the hallway, her bare feet cold on the wood floors. Lorraine’s door is open and Nessa steps inside. The walls, blank and naked, stare out into the room. No one’s in bed.

  Downstairs, she
follows the light from the kitchen, and when she turns the corner, she sees her mother. Lorraine is on the floor, leaning against the cabinets in her nightgown, knees up. Her head is tilted, so that her right ear is almost touching her right shoulder, and she’s holding her neck. When she looks up at Nessa, Nessa sees that the white of her mother’s left eye is no longer white but a deep, wet red and the other one is marbled with red freckles.

  Nessa runs to her. Up close Lorraine smells. It’s strong and nauseating—an artificial floral mixed with rot and sweat. It’s not a familiar smell, and that, for some reason—even more so than her mother’s eyes—frightens Nessa. Lorraine slides one of her hands to the front of her throat and gently tenses her fingers, and immediately Nessa understands that Jesse has done this to her.

  “Where is he?” Nessa says.

  “He left.”

  Nessa starts to stand. “I’m calling the police,” she says, but Lorraine grabs her violently by the wrist and, despite herself, Nessa sits.

  “I don’t want the police involved.” Lorraine glances around the kitchen, the blood in her eyes glimmering brilliantly.

  Then there are footsteps and they both look up, terrified, but it’s only Tanya in the doorway. “Oh my God,” Tanya says, her eyes wide. She looks at Nessa for an answer, but Nessa shakes her head, speechless.

  “I need you to bring me to the hospital,” Lorraine says, not to Nessa or Tanya but to the empty space between them.

  Tanya rushes over and they each put an arm under Lorraine and together all three of them stand, the smell so strong it’s embarrassing. Nessa has a vision then, of the future, when Lorraine is old and she and Tanya will have to help their mother go from sitting to standing.

  “We’ll take the rental,” Tanya says. “I’ll grab my purse.”

  Tanya drives and Nessa sits in back with her mother, holding her hand, which is soft and surprisingly cool. Lorraine keeps her eyes open and stares straight ahead out the front window. In the rearview mirror Nessa sees that Tanya’s eyes are clear and her face is steady, but her sister’s knuckles are white on the wheel and she’s driving fifteen miles over the speed limit.

  It’s the middle of the night and the roads are nearly empty, Mass Ave. a smooth, black ribbon unfurling before them. They sail through green light after green light, as if the city knows what’s going on and is ushering them through. Nessa looks out the window at the other night travelers—mostly trucks. She wonders where Jesse is. At a bar, most likely, or driving. She pictures Jesse with his hands around her mother’s neck. Imagining it makes something in her own throat tighten, so that for a moment she’s unable to swallow or take a breath, her throat is so thick with panic.

  She thinks about the time a Tinder date she brought home put his hands around her neck during sex. “Do you like this?” he said, applying pressure. It was the only question he’d asked her the entire night to which he sounded genuinely interested to know the answer. It surprised Nessa; he’d seemed so mild.

  “Yes,” she told him.

  His name was Nick and they’d continued to have sex for the rest of the summer. They never went on a date, though. He wasn’t interested in anything serious, he told her.

  She kept waiting for him to do it again. He hadn’t, and she’d been too embarrassed to ask. There was always the possibility of it, though, and that was what made it interesting. At the end of the summer, he told Nessa that he had a girlfriend and he couldn’t see her anymore.

  Nessa glances again at her mother. Then she rolls down the window and the cool spring air whooshes into the car, filling up the silence and masking the flower rot.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THEY LIMP into the emergency room at the Somerville Hospital, a nurse walks briskly over, pushing a wheelchair. “Easy now,” she says, helping Lorraine into it. The nurse looks neither surprised nor alarmed by Lorraine’s eyes or the red marks that have started to appear around her neck. “It’s quiet tonight,” she says to Lorraine. “You shouldn’t have to wait long to see the doctor.”

  “Thank you,” Lorraine says. “These are my daughters,” she adds, lifting her hand. “I’d like them to come with me.”

  The nurse looks at Nessa and Tanya and smiles. “Pretty, just like their mom.”

  Nessa and Tanya follow them down the hallway, the nurse pushing Lorraine along in the wheelchair. It gives Nessa a weird feeling, the fact that her mother seems to know who the nurse is, and how small Lorraine looks in the wheelchair—how comfortable she seems easing into it, like she’s done it before.

  Tanya is having trouble breathing. Something smells strange in the hospital room—bad—and every time she looks directly at her mother, the blood in Lorraine’s eyes sends a wave of nausea so powerful up through Tanya’s gut that she almost has to run out of the room to vomit. In order to avoid direct eye contact, Tanya looks at her mother’s forehead and blurs her vision whenever she turns in Lorraine’s direction. Luckily Nessa is doing the hand-holding. If Tanya was forced to touch her mother in this state, she is almost certain she would vomit.

  “Where the fuck is the doctor?” Tanya says for the third time, glancing at her phone. It’s 1:14 in the morning. Eitan is definitely asleep.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here soon, honey,” Lorraine answers, her voice a painful rasp, and Tanya regrets asking.

  “Excuse me for a sec.” Once Tanya is in the hallway, she breaks into a run. She makes it to a single, handicap-accessible bathroom just in time, slamming the door behind her.

  When Tanya was little, she used to cry when she threw up. Not afterward, but while it was happening. As if one action triggered the other. She doesn’t know why it happened this way, only that it did. She’s grown out of it, though, vomiting and crying simultaneously. But now, as she hurls into the pristine hospital toilet, hot tears leak out, like some sort of physiological reaction.

  “Fuck,” she mutters into the toilet bowl, once the contents of her stomach have emptied. She looks up. Above the toilet there’s a laminated flyer: It hurts to call but it hurts more not to. Call our 24/7 hotline to speak with a trained domestic violence counselor if you or someone you know . . .

  She flushes, then stands to examine the damage in the mirror, but her face isn’t as bad as she thought it would be. She hasn’t cried enough for her eyes to have puffed, and after rinsing her face and mouth with cold water, she appears presentable.

  She pulls out her phone and calls Eitan.

  He answers on the second ring. “Are you okay?” His voice, half-asleep, is laced with alertness and concern. He’s used to waking up quickly from being on call.

  “I’m okay, but my mom’s not.” For a moment her own voice catches and she wonders if she’s going to cry again, but she regains control. “Jesse strangled her. We’re in the emergency room waiting for the doctor.”

  She glances at the flyer above the toilet and thinks of tearing it down—as if it might be bugged, as if it might be watching her.

  “Oh my God, Tanya.” She pictures him sitting up in bed. “Do you want me to come?”

  “No,” Tanya says. “I mean yes, of course. But I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know. We’re still trying to figure it out.” Tanya turns away from the mirror and begins pacing the bathroom. “To be honest, Eitan, I’m not surprised this happened. I mean, of course I’m shocked. You don’t expect to wake up in the middle of the night and see that—but Jesse is a classic abuser. Manipulative, controlling, insecure, power-hungry. God knows he’s been emotionally abusing her for years. It should come as no surprise that he beats the shit out of her, too. I just thought I would have picked up on something like this, or that if it had gotten to this point, she would have left him, you know?”

  As she says the words, she wonders if they’re honest. It is true that she hadn’t been aware o
f Jesse’s physical abuse. But also, Tanya has never allowed herself to think about such possibilities. She hardly goes home. She calls her mother once a month, if that, and they don’t talk about anything personal. Tanya never asks about Jesse.

  “Tanya—”

  “Unless this is the first time this happened, in which case, let’s just get him arrested and be done with it as quickly as possible. Photograph the injury—there are witnesses of course, we went to the ER; we have literally all the evidence we need. We’ll get a restraining order; he’ll be out of our lives forever, and we’ll never have to see his hideous fucking face again.”

  “Tanya—”

  “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re talking really, really quickly.”

  “Is . . . this . . . better?”

  She can hear Eitan gather his breath. “You must be really frightened.” He’s using his soft voice, the one she associates with his religious side, with his desperate wish to be a father, with the effortless, practically ridiculous way he seems to love her.

  “I don’t have time for therapy,” she says. “I need to get back to my mom. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Please do. Tanya, tell me if you change your mind and you want me to come up.”

  “I’ll let you know,” she says, but she knows with certainty there is no chance of this happening. Her life with Eitan is a separate thing from her life with her family. She doesn’t want to mix the two. She doesn’t want to take the chance of contaminating something sweet with something insidious.

  I’m done with him,” Lorraine says. She’s sitting up in bed in her hospital gown, and Nessa is beside her on a rolling stool. Tanya, who has just come back from the bathroom, rolls furiously closer to the bed on another stool.