In the Dead of Summer

by Gillian Roberts

  Thou shalt go thou shalt return

  never by war shalt thou perish.

  “So he went,” I said. “But he didn’t come back. That Oracle was no good with commas. This should have read:

  Thou shalt go, thou shalt return

  never, by war shalt thou perish.

  “Lack of comma sense killed him.” I’ve scored a pedagogic touchdown when I see kids copying an example or exercise on which they’ll never be tested.

  The working portion of my day ended at about the same time that Mackenzie’s reentry into employment began. We were back out of synch, and I already missed having him at the ready, there when I needed him, devoting his daily routine and all his energy to making my time at home pleasant and relaxing. Anxious for news of the outside world, a little depressed, but eager to please.

  I’d had a gender-free retro housewife, and it was hard to give it up. No wonder so many men had been royally pissed since the Seventies.

  I passed Aldis on the way down the back stairs. She looked at me with a cold, suspicious eye. I psychically frisked myself for guilt. She had that effect.

  I had tried to be charitable for a long while now, but the woman gave me the creeps. The only attraction to teaching I could imagine for a chilly, single-minded woman like her would be the allure of control.

  It has been my observation that it’s next to impossible and downright heroic for a teacher to significantly improve a child’s life, abilities, or mental health. But it’s easy to use the bit of power you’ve got to injure that child, to do serious damage to growing egos. Our capacity to wound far exceeds our ability to do good, and “first do no harm” should be our motto as much as it is a physician’s.

  Aldis seemed likely to be a power monger sucking the joy from learning and leaving permanent scars in her wake.

  I gave her a perfunctory nod. Once outside, we both slowed to look up at the slice of sky that showed between the buildings. Its earlier blue had turned sour, looked almost bruised and bloated. Rain skulked somewhere. Never trust the promise of a summer’s day.

  Aldis unlocked her car and removed an iron bar device from the steering wheel of her dinged, rusty red sedan. A city conveyance, kept in bad shape, below the standards of thieves.

  My vehicle was due to be picked up in two hours, so I walked. What had Aldis been doing at school last night? I wanted to grill her under harsh police lights. Forget the bogus roll-book story, babe, and confess, I’d say. The third degree, whatever that was. I’d have to ask Mackenzie what the first and second degrees were.

  On the other hand, I feared that this entire string of events was going to turn out to have been hideously ordinary. Nothing to confess, nothing provoking headlines. One gang killed a member of the other. The other struck back. The same story that ran last week and the week before. Use the boilerplate print. Just change the names of the victims and suspects. And what could be more depressing?

  I should have suspected that Woody was in a gang, even if nobody mentioned it. It was too dangerous traveling solo in his world, and the only safety—albeit a shaky one—was in numbers. There were markers and monuments to dead children all over the city, and even as these dark images surged through my mind, I saw an example on a passing car. Its trunk had a white cross painted on it and the back window shelf had become a shrine with plastic flowers and a small crucifix. A driver grieving for someone close to him who was murdered, unnaturally dead.

  The car, my thoughts, even the sighting of Aldis, left a bitter aftertaste. Going home to an empty house, a space absent of the immediate possibility of Mackenzie, felt purposeless and dismal.

  The voice of my guardian nag piped up to ask whether I might deduce something from this reaction to Mackenzielessness. But what did she know? She sounded too much like my mother.

  Mandy, call your mother! I had submerged Lowell’s directive, forgotten that I was supposed to check in with Boca, to prove that I wasn’t being held hostage. It still felt absurd to reassure her that something that had never even been suggested had, in truth, not happened. I hadn’t been promoted or knighted or banished, either. Was I supposed to constantly call to catalogue things that had not happened to me? Hey, Mom—I haven’t mutated or marinated or hallucinated today. Damn Lowell. It was too tempting to think of retaliation, of a public accusation of Barry Manilow dependency.

  I trudged on. The humidity was like an overly affectionate, sweaty lover, refusing to let me out of its embrace. By the time I got home, I was slick and cranky.

  My house wasn’t precisely empty. Macavity, despite his fur coat, looked unfazed by either the heat or the humidity. “Hey buddy,” I said. “I’m alone. Your hero is not here. What you got is she who provides your link in the food chain. Humor me.” He yawned and stretched. I picked him up and planted one on his round forehead. He looked startled, then squirmed out of my hands and started furiously grooming himself.

  “Right,” I said “I forgot. I didn’t ask if you wanted to be kissed. I did not respect your boundaries, your otherness. You will probably take me to court for harassment, and I don’t blame you.” But I was just as bad as all the other rotters, because I winked at him, positive that he’d secretly enjoyed the nuzzle and guiltily aware that the next time I had an irresistible urge to kiss the cat, I would, no matter how he felt about it.

  I was bucked up by the twinkle of my answering machine. Four messages. I felt loved, wanted. I pressed the rewind button and waited for life to expand and include grand surprises.

  The first message was a desperately worried where-are-you-how-are-you post-Lowell cry from my mother’s heart.

  The second was a more puzzled, almost annoyed report that my mother had called the police, who, amazingly, had no record of anything like a hostage-taking happening, so where, then, was I?

  By her third message she had regained enough equilibrium to remember where I most logically was, and she’d called the school. “The secretary wouldn’t let me interrupt your class,” she said, “so I asked her, ‘Does that mean she’s there, teaching?’ and she was snippy. ‘One must assume that, Mrs. Pepper,’ she said. ‘She went upstairs as did her students and none have come back down, so they are either there, or they’ve jumped out the window.’ What kind of woman is that, Mandy? Anyway, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m sorry I was so worried. Ignore my other messages.”

  The fourth message was also from Bea Pepper. It told me not to ignore the part of the previous messages that said to call my aging progenitors, because it was high time I did so, even if I wasn’t being held by a masked gunman.

  Good daughter that I am, I dialed my parents, although that is not completely accurate. I dialed my parent, since I can’t remember when my father last lifted a receiver. He doesn’t like phones and pretty much doesn’t acknowledge that they exist. On the other hand, my mother more than compensates.

  Multiply her four calls to me today by the aunts, cousins, and neighbors who had to be kept on ready-alert about all stages of my alleged disappearance, and you may understand why I nominate Mom as the long-distance vendors’ poster girl. “Be like Bea. Live on the line.” It makes a nice slogan.

  The gods for once rewarded my good girl behavior. Nobody was home. I left my message. “Everything’s fine, Mom. Except for Lowell, who has a few itsy-bitsy flaws. Like he’s a hysteric. And delusional. And obnoxious. And a pest. And afraid of the dark. And an alarmist. And he has bad taste in music, too.”

  Since I already had the phone in hand, I dialed the hospital again, and asked after Woody’s condition. He had had microsurgery on both hands, I was told, and they were guardedly optimistic about the operation’s success. Right now he was resting, and all his vital signs were stable. He was out of intensive care and could, indeed, have a limited number of visitors this evening.

  I whooped and applauded. Woody hadn’t paid with his life or his hands for April’s misguided “escape.”

  Maybe we should stop teaching Romeo and Juliet to anyone under fifty. It was too adolesce
nt and set a bad example, presented wretched ideas. April had cried at the ending, yet still adopted the tragic heroine’s suicidal plan. It would work for her. Very like a teenager.

  I could tell Woody she was fine and ease his mind. I was sure he wouldn’t tell whoever it was that was menacing him or her, and I was positive his recovery would be quicker with the knowledge that he was guilty of nothing concerning her disappearance because she hadn’t disappeared.

  There was enough time to have something to eat before visiting Woody.

  I lifted the phone again. “He’s okay,” I told Five. “Resting but alert. I’m so relieved! I’ll aim for seven.”

  Woody was at University Hospital, which was not far from Five’s apartment in Powelton Village, a semifunky collection of rambling Victorians near Penn’s campus and hospital. I’d have my cleaned-up car back by then, so it made better geographical sense for me to pick Five up than the reverse, and with that decided, I hung up and, feeling cocky, walked over and again picked up Macavity and kissed that irresistible spot between his ears. And once again he gave me his yellow-eyed glare and squirmed out of my grasp. “So sue me,” I said.

  *

  The cheap-and-quick body shop had not done a great job. The car looked patched and makeshift. But you’d have to work really hard to decipher the eights or the half swastika. I was glad the light was so dim outside. It made my car look almost normal, even though it made finding Five’s house difficult. His neighborhood was poorly lit, the buildings not clearly numbered. Very Philadelphia.

  The sky had lowered till its entirety sat on my car roof, congested with incipient storm. Dusk felt like midnight. I cruised his street until finally I thought I had it, a four-story shingled and turreted building. He was apartment A, ground floor, which was the only set of windows with lights on. But any hope of spotting him at the window was squelched by curtains or shades blocking every clear view. I honked twice anyway. Maybe he would hear.

  He didn’t. No problem, then, except finding a parking space.

  I circled his block and the next one twice, which produced no result except to annoy the hell out of normal-speed drivers. There are people who were probably always courteous about hitching their horse and wagon in a previous life and who now have good parking karma. I am not one of them. God knows what parking sins I committed in past lives, because in this one I am condemned to spot a space opening up one half second after someone else has executed a wild U-turn in order to cover it.

  I almost always have to stifle an urge to solidly ram the good-karma cars in their parking spots, which should earn me an even worse parking karma in the next life.

  For the third time I made my way toward the shingled house, creeping down the street, certain that if I were very attentive, something would open up at the last minute. I glided along, then slid, as softly and slowly as if on ice skates, into the vicinity of Bartholomew Dennison the Fifth’s apartment. I’d have to double park and run up. One foot on the brake, I reached over and relocated a bouquet from the passenger seat to the ledge in the back that is only jokingly called a seat.

  I had dithered over a gift. I’d thought of a book, but realized that Woody had been operated on both hands and couldn’t use them for a while. I didn’t want to provide unnecessary frustration. I would never presume to pick music for a teen, and so flowers it was. Flowers for the young man hiding inside the glowering hostile student—a young man who just might be delighted—secretly—by being given something beautiful and perfumed.

  I turned off the radio, doused the lights, put my hand on the car keys—and felt the door beside me yank open. Cold metal pressed on the side of my forehead.

  “Get out,” a voice growled. “Get out and leave the keys.”

  My hand froze. I couldn’t believe it. I was in a university neighborhood, in front of a friend’s house.

  “Move it!” he shouted. “You want to be killed?”

  Killed? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with me? I was paralyzed, sure there was something I should be doing—look at him so I could ID him, maybe? I turned my head, and screamed. A gorilla aimed a gun at my head.

  The mask was terrifying, gorilla mouth half open, full of teeth. “I said move it!” he snarled.

  Oh, and I should, I knew I should. That was what you were supposed to do—go along, don’t annoy, don’t build the tension. Wasn’t that it? But instead of moving, which I couldn’t, I screamed again. “You can’t!” I heard myself insist stupidly. “This is my car!” sounding like a two-year-old fighting over toys. And then I remembered the H word. “Help!” I screamed. “Help! Help!” And my muscles regained their strength and I turned the key and tried to grab the gear shift and remembered that I hadn’t released the brake so I reached with that hand, too—

  That was close to the last thing I remember. That and the sound of my own voice, the feel of a large, gloved hand slapping mine away from the brake release, yanking my hair, pulling me sideways and hitting me—all in a split second while my scream was still in the air, hitting me again on the side of my head while my car sputtered and I felt the shock of the earth by the curb—hard on my shoulder and arm, even the tufts of grass—and then he hit me again.

  And that was that. No flashing lights like in the comic books, no tweeting birds. Nothing, except deathlike darkness.

  Twenty-Two

  THE HAND WAS ON ME AGAIN. ON MY SHOULDER. BEHIND ME.

  I screamed for help.

  “I am help. Mandy, are you all right?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. What was I doing in a patch of weedy dirt by a curb, my head against a tree, my feet in the street?—and I felt damp, even wet, and terrified what that might mean. Blood? I took a deep breath and put my fingers to my cheeks, then looked at them. It was dark—how much time had passed? Then I heard thunder and noticed that the pavement was wet, that rain was falling, and felt a little calmer. I was hurt, confused, and wet, but not necessarily bloody.

  Was that the same as being all right?

  “I was afraid to move you, or leave you, but I’m going to go away for a second now and call nine-one-one. Okay? You understand what I’m saying?”

  I tested my neck’s ability to rotate, half expecting my head to fall off as a result. Something wasn’t right with me. However, it wasn’t my neck, which creaked and groaned but worked. Now I could see to whom the voice belonged. “Five!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here. You were picking me up, don’t you remember? We were going to visit Woody in the hospital.”

  “What happened?”

  “I hoped you could answer that. I heard honking, then somebody screaming, and when I came out to check, you were on the curb and you wouldn’t answer me. Listen, I really should call the ambulance, so don’t move and—”

  “No.” I was surprised at how sure I felt of this. I was positive that if I were seriously damaged, I’d have a sense of it at the core, know that my wiring was down, a feeling like that. But I felt only achy and bruised, superficially bashed, and I couldn’t bear the idea of being handled by paramedics, being strapped on a gurney, any of it. “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t feel up to visiting Woody, though. I think I’ll just go home and take a warm bath.” I was filthy, in addition to achy. The earth around me was slowly mixing itself to mud, and I was a smeared mess.

  “You’re not fine at all. You’re bruised and you’ve been unconscious. Of course you can’t visit the boy. You’d scare him to death. You obviously don’t remember what happened.”

  I remembered all-encompassing, near-paralytic fear. I remembered hurting, and falling.

  “That kind of amnesia means a concussion,” he said. “And your face is scraped and about to turn the color of spoiled beef. I can’t let you drive in this condition.”

  I understood his logic. But his words also produced a sharp-edged sliver of hazily remembered fear. “I drove here,” I said. “They fixed my car.” I listened to my own words, knowing they were important, worth an
other experiment with head and neck motion. I felt a little more able to move this time, but the results were dismaying. “My car!” I cried out, understanding. “Where is it?”

  He shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d parked it somewhere I couldn’t see.”

  “They took it! They stole it!”

  “Who are they?”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t a great idea. I was suddenly very aware of the shape of my eye sockets, and of a rare variety of headache—socketache—rimming them. “A gorilla took it!”

  Five said nothing. I could practically feel his anxiety skyrocket.

  “Somebody in a gorilla mask, I mean.”

  His relief was audible, exhaled breath and something near a chuckle of released tension.

  “I was coming to get you,” I said, “and I opened the car door to get out and somebody—maybe several somebodies—hit me, and that’s what I remember.”

  “You were carjacked.”

  Carjacked is such a modern-sounding, almost romantic concept. Echoes of the frontier, masked bandits—not gorilla masks, either—Wells Fargo bags of gold, stagecoaches, hooves pounding in the night.

  Being jacked sounded a whole lot better than being robbed. My car had been jacked. Had I also been jacked? Was that what these bruises were called? Why Jack? Who was he?

  Something dreadful had happened, and I was mulling semantics. Maybe I had suffered brain injury, after all.

  “I’ll drive you to the police,” Five said. “After we visit the emergency room, and if they say it’s okay.”

  I sputtered a protest. “I want to go home. Please. Now.”

  “Go home? Can you?”

  I stared at him blankly, which probably didn’t help the case for my mental okayhood. “Is this an existential surprise quiz? Or like Thomas Wolfe? As in I can’t go home again? I’m too tired for literary—”