Girl Watching You

by J. A. Schneider

  “You’re here,” he says faintly.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  He fights his pain meds. “During the night, you weren’t…”

  “I’ll be right in that chair. Sleep, okay?”

  “You too.” His eyes peer into mine, and a feeble smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I’d wanted to wake up with you.”

  “You sort of have.”

  “Ha,” he manages, then winces in pain. His fingers weaken, his eyes close again, and his breathing deepens.

  I step back. It’s over four feet between the bed and the window, room for a gurney, too far to feel close to him. Painfully, I get behind my armchair and push it closer to him; toe my duffle closer, too.

  Then I ease back down, exhaling. Behind me, the light in the window has turned from dark gray to softer gray. Before me, Peter’s hand has moved toward me, touching distance.

  And across the room looms the door through which his children will come. They’ll glare and cry…what will I do? What can I say?

  I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m terrified….

  A swishing noise; squeak of crepe soles.

  I barely hear someone say “muffin,” and “coffee,” and “you should eat.”

  I mumble thanks, get down the muffin and an Aleve, lay my head back, and sleep.

  56

  Sounds. Whispers. A small whimper, an adult’s hush….

  My eyes open to stripes of sun on the bed, streaming from the blinds. There’s the smell of food, voices in the hallway, voices closer.

  Rafe looks up from bending to Peter, smiles, and touches his shoulder. Peter’s head turns on the pillow to me. “Hey,” he smiles in groggy pain. “You’re awake.”

  Blinking, I take in the room. They’re here….

  On the other side of the bed, Mary still in her coat, her eyes reddened and puffy; six-year-old Abby solemn-eyed; Rafe reaching to Teddy whose big brown eyes peer over the bed to me.

  Wrong side of the bed.

  I sit upright. “The chest tube,” I say, froggy-voiced.

  “Nurse told us,” Rafe says. “We’re careful;” and Mary says, with effort, “We just got here. So sorry to wake you.” She looks terribly sad and unwell; dark, dark shadows under her eyes as if she hasn’t slept at all.

  “Honey?” Peter says to Abby, who hesitates, then starts to walk around the bed.

  I lean apprehensively forward as she approaches, her large blue eyes emotional. She clutches her doll and a small book; I can’t see the title but I can guess. She stops feet away, glances anxiously to Peter, who smiles encouragingly.

  Then she looks back to me.

  “Thank you for saving my Dad,” she says almost formally, but with a quaver.

  My breath stops and I stare at her. Have they been told?

  I look worriedly to Peter. With his features hurting, he tries to smile and nods encouragement to me. Then he beckons Abby closer.

  She comes, stands almost in front of me, reaches to put her right hand on the side of his bed. Her free hand holds her book and her doll. She’s wearing pale blue jeans under a pink hooded puffer jacket.

  I hold my breath.

  “Meet Ava,” Peter tells her, still encouraging. He beckons to me too, managing a weak smile. “Can you move?”

  I push myself up, slowly, painfully, and practically pitch forward to place both my palms on the bed. I drop my head a little, utter a soft “whew” below my breath.

  His fingers touch my left hand, and squeeze it feebly. My other hand is close to Abby’s.

  “Ava’s special,” Peter tells his daughter. “Very, very brave.”

  I close my eyes for a second, knowing that hearing that will stay with me forever. Me…brave? I feel the child’s gaze on me, turn my head to her.

  She peers feelingly at my bruised eye and says, “I’m sorry you were injured.”

  “Thank you, Abby,” I say, and try to smile. “It will get better.”

  I look back to Peter and pantomime, “They know?”

  He nods almost imperceptibly, then shifts his gaze to Mary, coming around the bed after Abby.

  “I was…overheard crying to a detective,” she says cryptically, sorrowfully, dropping into a chair that’s been pulled up next to mine. Her whole body hunches. She’s the picture of woe. “I didn’t know there was anyone…”

  “I snuck out of bed,” Abby says alertly. “Because I heard voices and I always sneak to listen. I heard the policemen. I saw their guns.” She raises her free hand toward my face and says, “Ow-w, that must really hurt.” The book in her other hand, I see, is The Secret Garden.

  My heart squeezes.

  Teddy comes up behind Abby and announces, “Uncle Nick had a black eye once.” His big, dark eyes are on me as if I’m some new, wondrous creature.

  “Mommy hurt him,” his sister informs me somberly. “She hit him with a lamp.”

  “No, his tennis racquet,” Teddy says.

  “That was the other time,” Abby says. “She got worse when Daddy moved out.”

  Rafe, leaning on the bottom of the bed, gives me a shrug that says he’s used to this.

  But Abby’s last comment startles me, and I trade looks with Peter. Mary may have seen Nick and Chrissy argue, but only Nick knew how badly she had deteriorated. Suddenly I’m convinced that she would have hurt Peter anyway. A scorned, crazy woman with a gun, my God…

  Peter reads me. Weakly, he presses his lips, squeezes my hand.

  Still, I’m stunned. It’s surreal, hearing children speak like this about domestic violence. Shouldn’t it be traumatic? They’re sparring lightly now and vying for our attention – “the lamp”… “the tennis racquet!” - like round-eyed little reporters describing war scenes.

  Then again, Peter said they had a child shrink who must encourage verbalizing: get the pain out. And after this, for sure he’ll have them in extra therapy.

  Subtly, I shake my head. Peter is watching my face…watching everyone’s reaction…and he seems glad. The corner of his mouth tips up in a smile to me, then his eyelids flutter. He’s fighting his medication.

  And I’m fighting the aches of standing; so, slowly, I sink back down into the armchair, feeling overwhelmed.

  No way can I process this turnabout…last night’s horror, the children seem okay but how can they be okay? I feel tears erupt.

  They see, and look at me round-eyed.

  My arms just open to them.

  They come into my embrace, and I hug them. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, choking back more tears. “I wish I could make everything right…”

  “Please don’t cry,” Abby pleads, looking as if she might cry too; and Teddy helpfully starts piping about Sammy Gram’s mom who bashed his dad’s head in with a kayak oar. “He was unconscious! Bleeding!”

  I cringe and say, “Oh, that’s awful;” and Abby says, “Look!”

  She steps excitedly past me and picks up the fishing photo. “Daddy!” she cries. “Our picture! The one I took!”

  Feelings leap and every face smiles as she shows it to Peter, and he takes it, brings it close. His face works. He looks at me, understanding that I remembered, then he looks at it again. In front of me the children lean on the bed, exclaiming, touching his arm, his cheek. Will they go fishing again soon? Is there still fishing in September? October?

  “Yes,” he manages. “We’ll catch trout, bass, pike-”

  “Trout!” Abby says. “They’re so pretty, all blue, green and red – and they taste so good.”

  “Especially when you catch them yourself,” Rafe says emotionally. The big guy looks like he might tear up.

  Mary next to me is near tears, too. “So special that you brought it,” she says tremulously. “They have a copy in their room. You’ve made…here…feel like home.”

  I touch her arm. “You look like you didn’t sleep at all.”

  She nods as if it hurts. “Not a wink.” Her reddened eyes move to Teddy trying to climb into bed with his Dad, and Abby tr
ying to restrain him. “I fear I’ll drop right in front of them.”

  “Go back,” I say. “Rest.”

  A nurse enters, announcing that visiting time is up; the patient’s on strong medication and needs to rest. She stays, friendly but firm, and bends to check Peter’s surgical dressing.

  Clamor.

  The children won’t go. Abby pleads and Teddy hangs onto his Daddy’s hand, bleating, stomping his feet. Gazes intersect wondering what now, and Mary drops her head to her hand. “I have to lie down,” she murmurs.

  Rafe comes to her, ready to drive them all back. Teddy and Abby turn to him in mutiny.

  Peter’s questioning eyes meet mine feebly: Suggestion?

  I get an idea.

  They like it. I ask the nurse, she goes to ask if it’s okay, and returns with an orderly carrying a gurney mattress and a blanket.

  Mary and Rafe give hugs and leave.

  The orderly and the nurse help me clear away the chairs. Onto the floor against the wall goes the mattress, and onto the mattress under the blanket go me with my back to the wall, Abby on one side leaning against my arm, Teddy on the other.

  I start to read from The Secret Garden. Peter looks both relieved and fogged with meds. He watches for minutes, happily, I think. Then he falls asleep.

  “When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle,” I begin, “everyone said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.”

  The children giggle and cuddle, and I read, remembering my mother reading to me, and my father too…they’d take turns with Kim and me, over and over with this extraordinary book. How my heart caught when I saw it in Abby’s hand.

  “She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all…”

  I say the words softly and they carry me back, to snug and happy times and…yes, as Peter said…the irretrievable past. I miss my parents. I miss Kim so much that sorrow wells again.

  But here I am…and maybe just maybe the future is here, on this lumpy mattress in this unfamiliar hospital room. Life has led me here. I’ll do this and more for as long as I’m needed.

  And then what?

  Cooper’s? Street Beat?

  I don’t know. The strangest hand ever somehow dealt itself to me. I’ll just let it play itself out.

  So I read. The children seem mesmerized by the words, my soft tones. Abby pulls the blanket tighter around us, and cuddles closer.

  “…by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived-”

  Abby giggles, then covers her mouth; looks round-eyed up to Peter.

  “Asleep,” I reassure, and resume reading, and mull what weighs in the back of my mind.

  They know the barest facts about last night – bad enough - and are happy to have their Dad safe. Someday, probably, they’ll find out about Chloe Weld and Darcy Lund. I hope they’ll grow up able to deal with it. Everywhere I hear of children surviving trauma, terrible secrets, even war, and they’re resilient, especially when given tons of love. The sins of the father or mother are not the sins of the child.

  “After that, appalling things happened. The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and people were dying like flies. Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died too had left the house as quickly as they could-”

  Abby asks, “Do you think Mary missed her mother after that?”

  The book’s pages are thumbed, well loved. She knows the story. “What do you think?” I ask.

  “She didn’t. Her mother was only interested in parties and pretty dresses. She never really cared about Mary, so why should Mary cry?”

  “That’s what I think, too.”

  Abby grows silent, thinking, and I continue reading. A bar of light from the window moves across the bed where Peter sleeps, and up the far wall.

  Teddy has fallen asleep under my arm, and I hug him tighter.

  57

  Ten Weeks Later

  It’s been hard. In three days it will be Thanksgiving…impossible to believe. We have soldiered through more tough times, dealt with a lot.

  I took a week off from Cooper’s (“You have to get nearly killed to give yourself a break?” Joe said); then I quit entirely. The producer of Street Beat called to say no need for the audition; I should mend and the role is mine. “I already know you’re terrific,” he gushed. “And with all the media coverage you’ve been getting it’s you they’ll be clamoring for - we’re going to have a megahit!”

  Heartwarming.

  He’s also heard more gossip that Brett Moore is absolutely, positively, toast so it’s safe to hire me again…but that’s okay. It worked out well, in fact: shooting (still can’t get re-used to that word) began six weeks ago, which gave me time to devote totally to Peter.

  He spent the next five days in the hospital. He was going to mend, his surgeon told him, though he’d have to walk on crutches for two weeks, “possibly three, depending how it goes.”

  It’s gone longer than that.

  In the hospital he hurt all over, slept a lot. The children came after school and read, drew pictures. I helped Teddy with his alphabet and Abby with subtraction. Cards and flowers came, and Peter’s finance friends, emotional and disbelieving. By day three he was on his phone with them too much. By day four he crutched himself up and down the corridor, so painful he called it “murder.” The children trailed along, clinging to his robe, worried and sympathetic beyond their years. It turned out that one crutch on his good side was all he could bear. His mending rib and bullet-torn muscle couldn’t tolerate the second crutch…so, aching, I held on to his right arm.

  What a sight we made, bent and groaning like walking wounded. It took ten days before I could move without back spasm.

  Then I hired a carpenter to replace my door, and an outfit to clean my apartment’s front rooms. With them, creakily, I dusted the more delicate pieces, and my father’s desk. Mel Cooper came to help, as did Joe, shaking his head wearing his tried to warn look…which he finally discarded.

  My bedroom hadn’t been touched. I slept there until Peter, back at home, begged that he was lonely.

  I was there that same night.

  And now here I stand, sighing, on Leroy Street in Greenwich Village, where possibly more film and TV scenes have been shot than any other location in the city. I’m feeling okay. Way better than when I first arrived on the set, still getting over everything, still having occasional nightmares. It’s also nice that today’s shoot (there’s that word again) is on Leroy, just blocks from Charles Street.

  Today has brought production problems. Lyle the director stands across the old, cobbled street in his rumpled windbreaker arguing with some portly official from the NYC Office of Film and Theater. It’s about our permit.

  “We had it but we didn’t have it?” gripes a crew member reloading dolly tracks.

  “They forgot to inform the neighbors,” I say, starting to cross the closed street between people packing up klieg lights and cables and catering. I left my jacket in the parked trailer and stop, for a moment, to stare at the building behind it.

  In our script, someone in that Greek Revival brownstone has been murdered. It’s fiction, right? The story’s unlike our real trauma of ten weeks ago because it was an outside job: someone fired a gun at night through the downstairs window, and I, as Detective Sergeant, am supposed to figure out who.

  Still, it’s a downer. I’m tired of these depressing, claustrophobic brownstones all squeezed together, and I’m glad about the permit snafu so we can quit early. A November gust swirls dead leaves and I kick them, feel chilled, hug myself.

  “You’re wearing that look again,” says Mel, coming up. She’s going crazy waiting for the results of he
r bar exam, so I got her a job as a two-day extra, a neighbor. We’re both in sweaters and jeans, only I’m wearing a movie gun.

  “A moment’s melancholy,” I say. “It’s passed, mostly.”

  She understands what mostly means. Together we enter the trailer full of wardrobe and makeup. I pull my gun off first, toss it with the others.

  Peter still has health problems. Teddy still has occasional nightmares, only fewer; just one this week. And somewhere, in the midst of dealing with those things and stressing about the coming trial, my divorce became final. Alex called that day, trying to sound somber but really psyched about his trial prep. “Open and shut, slam dunk,” he kept saying, ignoring my silences.

  No matter how disappointing a marriage has been, its official dissolution is a wrench.

  Mel scrubs off her makeup before a mirror. I do the same before a different mirror. We’ve become closer since what she calls the big nightmare. Now she sends me a caring, questioning glance, the word melancholy still hanging.

  “What’s overwhelming,” I say, “is the feeling that the hourglass of my life has been turned and is starting over, along with huge choices to be made. Do you ever feel sure?”

  “Never. I’m having those feelings too – nothing like what you’ve been through – but jeez, life can be scary.”

  I scrub at black eyeliner. “Problem is, this gloomy weather gets me all raw again. Everything comes back. My sister…they’ll be showing her pictures at the trial, reading her emails, playing her voice.”

  “Awful. You don’t get a break.”

  “It helps that Peter will be with me, but yeah, I’m pretty tense.”

  Mel scowls unhappily at the makeup-smeared cotton ball she holds. “’Peter will be with me,’” she echoes. “You are so lucky. I’m starting to worry I’ll never find that kind of relationship.”

  Oh, the irony. I look at her fondly.

  “At my lowest ebb I thought that too. It’s because I was so down that I did crazy things that led me here.”

  “Life’s full of surprises,” she sighs.

  “Just don’t start climbing fire escapes.”