All of Us (ARC)

by A F Carter

clerk and worked out of the same room every night. The odd

  part is that they didn’t use drugs themselves because they

  were subject to random drug testing at the shelter. So, our

  working theory, as far as it concerns O’Neill, is that he and his partner got into a dispute over business and O’Neill took him out. That’s bolstered by a pair of hookers who heard

  them arguing over money on several earlier occasions. Part-

  ners or not, the two men did not get along.”

  I get up and clear the table, carrying the dishes to the

  sink. I can’t bring myself to ask the obvious question. And

  us, what do you have on us? I pour the bacon fat into an

  empty pickle jar. Later I’ll use it to fry up collard greens and white beans, greens and beans, an alternative to the rice

  we . . . Finally, I blurt it out.

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  “And what about Carolyn Grand? Is there any reason,

  besides what you told me before, that she’s a suspect?”

  “O’Neill claims that he saw you there, but his ID doesn’t

  mean much. He didn’t mention seeing you the first time we

  interviewed him or the second time. Plus, O’Neill’s a sus-

  pect and he’s got every reason to lie. In fact, he gave us three other suspects, two pimps and a paroled con who stays at

  the shelter, before he named you. No, your problem, so far,

  is a second ID, this one made by a hooker named Josie San-

  chez. Josie’s a heroin addict with a long record of solicitation and drug possession arrests. She was stoned when we interviewed her and most likely stoned the night she claimed to

  see someone who looked like Carolyn Grand, but different

  somehow. As different, perhaps, as you and Eleni.”

  I rinse the frying pan and lay it in the drain basket. “What does all that mean? Are we suspects or not?”

  “It means that you’re near the bottom of a long list of

  suspects that includes every hooker and pimp who used the

  hotel. But the real hurdle is still out there. CSU recovered substantial organic material at the murder scene and from

  your apartment. The DNA is being analyzed and will even-

  tually be cross-compared to yours, your father’s, O’Neill’s, and the other suspects’. Take this to the bank, Martha. If my partner can put you in that room, he’ll arrest you.”

  “If you do that, we’ll be committed to a psychiatric hospi-

  tal, even if we’re never convicted.”

  Ortega raises a finger. “Greco does not give a shit. He’s

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  you get there.” He stops for a moment, his gaze intent. “But if you don’t mind, I have a question. You told me that you

  were . . . I don’t know the right word here.”

  “In control.”

  “Okay, you were in control the night your father was

  killed. You watched TV, went to bed and woke up still in

  control. I want to know if it’s possible that some other self gained temporary control while you slept? Without you

  knowing it.”

  “It’s possible, yes. But it’s also possible that I’m lying

  through my teeth.” As I watch him rise and head for the

  door, I fire off a pair of questions, my tone now angry. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping us?”

  “You mean, outside of my attraction to Eleni?”

  “Yeah.”

  He opens the door, smiles and shrugs, even as his eyes

  sadden. “Forget about reasons, Martha. I’m way past rea-

  sons. I have been for a long time.”

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  SERENA

  I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, sitting across from il Dottore with his ugly gaze weighing me in

  the balance. Surely this one can be broken. Surely this one

  can be made to bleed.

  How could he not remind me of my father?

  I beg for release, for annihilation, even for true insanity, the confusion of the damned. I am no longer of use to my

  family. When I look up, nothing looks back, every dream’s

  dark underbelly now exposed.

  Our father had a special closet for his daughter, the door-

  way overlapped by sheets of cardboard so that no light pen-

  etrated, not a ray, the black absolute, the bottom of a coal mine or an ocean. And God help Carolyn Grand if she peeled

  back that cardboard, God help her if she disobeyed, God help her if she hoped.

  I’m in that closet now, though nothing in il Dottore’s

  office has changed: the antiques in the same niches, the

  amber lamp resting on his desk, the rug cool and gray, the

  lacquered desk as black as Hank Grand’s soul.

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  Carolyn didn’t rebel, no more than the other children

  who passed through her father’s home, accompanied by

  their own fathers, their own mothers, pledged offerings to

  some demon too hideous to be named.

  Can you commit suicide if you don’t exist? Can you kill

  the self without killing the body?

  “Serena, I presume.” Il Dottore’s tone is almost gay.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you speak a bit louder?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, I can’t. Too tired.”

  “I see. Well, did you at least bring the memos? The ones

  I asked Kirk to make sure came along with your next visit?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t.”

  He falls back in his chair, shakes his head and rubs at his

  eyes, the attempt to feign exasperation supremely theatrical.

  He persists nevertheless, only gradually calming.

  “Alright, let’s talk about anger, Serena. Your name, you

  know, indicates serenity, but is it possible to be serene after what you’ve been through?”

  “Are you asking Serena. Or are you asking Carolyn

  Grand?”

  “Serena.”

  “Well, the question itself is invalid.”

  “How so?”

  “You assume that anger and serenity are opposed sides of

  a two-sided coin. So narrow, Doctor, so lacking in imagina-

  tion, you the scientist, the objectivist. But why not despair?

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  Why not, when anger is pushed to the side, acknowledge

  how meaningless, how absurd, how comical your suffering

  has been? Why not admit that the well you stumbled into

  has no bottom? May I tell you a story?”

  His blue eyes light up. “Of course.”

  “Other children passed through Hank Grand’s house,

  brought there by a parent or by parents, mother and father,

  seeming natural, this is what we do, tell no one, it’s okay

  little girl, darling boy. And what are the children to do, broken as they are to the plow? Except, when the adults dismiss them, play?

  “For about a year, when Carolyn was seven, Mira, also

  seven, came to the house at least once a week, not afraid, not even resigned, brought by her father, one of Hank Grand’s

  best buddies and a partner in the film business. First things first, the girls
made flesh the perverted fantasies of the adults around them, afterward retreating to Carolyn’s bedroom

  upstairs, to watch TV sometimes but mostly to play a game

  of pretend. Each of them had a doll, Mira’s nearly new, Car-

  olyn’s battered, the difference not occurring to the girls as they imagined a world they’d never known. The dolls had

  parties, went to school, rode three-wheelers up and down

  the block, played hopscotch on the sidewalk, tested hair-

  styles, modeled the dresses brought by Mira. They lived

  happy lives, joyous lives, normal lives, children’s lives.

  “Other children, when they appeared, were drafted into

  the game, becoming teachers and doctors and policemen,

  becoming grocers and druggists, becoming boyfriends and

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  girlfriends, husbands and wives, having children of their

  own, cherished beloved children.

  “Carolyn dreamed, too, and she didn’t stop until she was

  taken away from her father, when her dreams should have

  come true, when she might have found someone to love her,

  to cherish her, but got the Acevedas instead. Only then did

  hope die, replaced by . . . by me, Eleni, Martha, Victoria,

  Kirk and many, many more. We’re her consolation prize.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I thought you wanted to know.”

  “Know what exactly? What was your purpose?”

  Without warning, I feel myself surrounded, as though

  wrapped in protective arms, the arms of a lover or a parent.

  I think, first, it must be Eleni or Kirk, but it’s not, and it’s not Martha, not Victoria. Older now, older than time itself, Tina holds me.

  I listen to us breathe, my breath and hers, feel her warmth, our warmth, the heat of our body. My need swells as though

  summoned by a snake charmer’s flute. It flows into little

  Tina and I sense obligation, raw as winter rain, when her

  arms tighten around me.

  “You have only to endure,” she tells me. “Only to endure.”

  Il Dottore clears his throat. “You didn’t answer my question.

  The story you told me, about the other children, what did

  you hope to accomplish?”

  “I wanted to inform.”

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  “Please.” Il Dottore’s laugh is a snort, the grunt of animal, a pig smelling the odor of a truffle beneath the muck at the bottom of its pen. “Inform me of what?”

  “That Carolyn never gave up, that her courage, insig-

  nificant as it may have been, must count for something, no

  matter the world schemed against her, no respite, neither

  water for the thirsty nor food for the starving. Carolyn never caught a break, bad luck her only luck, and still she fought.”

  “If you only knew how tiresome . . .” He fetches his

  enameled fountain pen, removes the top, replaces it. “We go

  round and round. Not just you, Serena, but all of you, Kirk, Victoria, Martha, Eleni, Tina. All of you, without exception.

  Do any of you have the slightest interest in reintegrating?

  Into again becoming Carolyn Grand? I don’t think so. You

  want only to be free, of the review board, of your therapy

  and your therapist.”

  Does he realize that integration equals annihilation, that

  we know ourselves as living independent beings, our right

  to life as valid as that of the first microbe to wriggle its way through a primeval swamp? Just now my bladder is so full

  it’s all I can do not to squirm on the seat. And a little wave of acid inches along my esophagus—the antacid in my bag,

  so close, relief at hand if only I dared—and there’s a dried booger clinging to the inside of my right nostril and my

  ragged toenails are tearing into my forest-green leggings.

  I am real. I exist.

  I hear Victoria’s voice at that moment, repeat her words,

  syllable for syllable—careful, careful—there must be no

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  mistakes. “Jesus instructs us to love our enemies, failure

  to do so a stone rolled across the entrance to His Father’s

  kingdom. But the instruction is no more than a tease

  because Jesus fails to tell us how to love our enemies, as if we could simply decide and our hearts would overfill. You also

  tease when you, a man able to sustain the illusion of a single self, state our goal simply: reunify. You cannot, of course, understand why the merits of the goal you set are dubious,

  but that’s of no matter. The merits, even if indisputable, are of no value merely stated. You haven’t told us how we are to achieve unification any more than Jesus told us how to love

  those we hate. Wishing, Doctor, let me assure you, will not

  make it so.”

  Il Dottore stares at me for a moment, then laughs again.

  “Let me give you a hint. The path to unification necessar-

  ily begins with a commitment to unify. Neither you nor the

  others have made that commitment.” He exudes a theatri-

  cal groan and I find myself wondering if he believes what

  he says. Victoria and Martha would like nothing more than

  to see me go, accompanied in the shortest of orders by Eleni and Kirk. Martha’s said so many times.

  “Maybe it’s my fault,” he continues. “Maybe there’s a magic

  wand out there and I simply haven’t found it. It hardly mat-

  ters because, bottom line, I can’t perpetuate a fraud by continuing to treat you when months have gone by and you’ve

  made no progress. I really must reconsider our relationship.”

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  CHAPTER FORTY

  SERENA

  I’m still two blocks from home, hurrying beneath a

  pewter- gray sky streaked with black clouds that lower by

  the second, as always oblivious to weather forecasts, each

  day presumed to repeat the day before. My fellow citizens

  hustle along beside me, a sprinter in running gear, a mom

  pushing a stroller, a man who slaps frantically at the tires of his wheelchair. I’m moving a lot faster, too, but not fast enough, a few drops instantly becoming millions upon

  millions. I know I should see what’s there, should reach for a world far older than ours, the great surrender. That’s my job, but I’m not up to it. If I ever was.

  I have an umbrella in my bag, one of those tiny folding

  umbrellas barely wide enough to cover my head. I grip the

  shaft in my right hand, hold down one edge of the fabric

  with my left, tuck my head between the struts, my clothing

  instantly soaked, rainwater flowing in streams the length of my body, exquisitely cold. The sidewalks empty as I push

  through, the cars on the street almost invisible, shrouded in the mist thrown up by their hissing tires.

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  I’m turning onto South Portland Avenue when I’m

  attacked fifty yards from home, thinking already of a warm

  shower and whatever meal can be put together. He’s on

  me before I know he’s there, fists slamming into my head,

  my face, my mouth, my nose. I taste blood on my tongue

  as I crash to th
e sidewalk, him on top of me, the weight

  unbearable as he drags my head back and forth across the

  concrete, hits me again, again, again while he talks to me,

  the words little more than grunts.

  Confess, innocent, you better, better, better, next time

  you’re dead.

  He stands up finally, backing slightly away. I know what

  he’s going to do and I know what Tina meant when she told

  me that I had only to endure. He lifts his right leg, draws

  it back, hesitates for seconds that seem like hours, finally drives the tip of his boot into my forehead.

  Two women, one of them speaking words I can’t hear, slide

  me onto a hard, plastic board and begin to strap me down.

  I’m feeling no pain though I’m sure that I will, and soon. The right side of my face is numb, lower back as well, but I’m

  moving my legs as I offer myself and whoever else may be

  listening a conclusive self-diagnosis. Carolyn Grand will live.

  They lift me up and my world begins to spin, only one

  more thought before I’m unconscious. The others, the little

  Carolyn Grands, the selves now gone. Were they exiled, or,

  worse, annihilated? Or did they simply give up, the struggle subject to the strictest of cost-benefit analyses, too great to be endured?

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  Hours later, I open one eye, the eye not swollen shut. I’m

  looking through a window at the blank night sky, my brain

  numbed by whatever opiate they’ve put into my system, yet

  the pain somehow still there, lying outside my body, wait-

  ing, waiting. I hear myself groan when I turn my head,

  the sound remote, my body following in slow motion, sul-

  try almost, as if a lover awaited me, arms outstretched, lips already parted. But there’s no lover nearby, only the face of Detective Ortega, his gaze as always intense.

  And me, Serena, I’m so relieved to see him that tears

  well up.

  Ortega disappears for a moment, then returns with a Sty-

  rofoam cup in his hand, a pink straw poking through its lid.

  He places the straw between my lips, waits for me to sip,

  then asks, “Who?”

  “Serena.”

  “Name me a name, Serena. Who attacked you?”

  “O’Neill.”

  Ortega’s on his cell phone within seconds, saying, “Yeah,

  she just identified O’Neill. It’s a go.” He listens for a moment, then hangs up and returns to my bedside.

  “Mirror,” I say, but it comes out “miwaw,” and I have