by Tawni O'Dell
He sucks in a gasp of pain and his face grows pale as he pulls his knees up to his chest and rolls off me onto his back. I crawl on top of him and smack him in the face, but it does little good. When fighting on the ground, it’s almost impossible to get any body weight behind a blow with a fist.
I go a different route and stick my little finger up one of his nostrils, pushing it as hard and as deep as I can. It sounds mild enough, but it isn’t. It feels like someone is drilling into your brain.
He tries to lift his head back and away from me, but my pinkie goes with him. As his head rears back and his neck stretches I pull my finger free and go for one of the most sensitive areas on the human body.
I drive my thumb into the cluster of nerves in the indentation below his ear and behind his jaw. He screams when I dig into the muscles, separating them so I can squash one of his spinal nerves. But it’s not enough. He’s stronger than me, and he’s fast and experienced.
He palms my face with his hand and snaps my neck back while punching me in the stomach with his fist.
All the air rushes out of me and I see flashes of light against the blackness before my eyes.
“I’m sorry I had to hurt your pretty face,” I hear him whisper. His lips are so close, I can feel his hot breath against my ear. “I didn’t want to but you gave me no choice.”
He grabs my hair and pulls me into a sitting position. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t breathe at all.
“Tell your sister I’m going to have talk with her soon” is the last thing I hear before he pistol-whips me on the side of the head and I lose consciousness.
The snow wakes me. Cold, wet, soft flakes settling on my exposed skin. I’m chilled to the bone and can’t stop shivering. In the distance I hear a muted ringing and have enough sense to realize the sound is coming from my cell phone inside my boot. But I can’t move. I feel like I’ll never move again.
I close my eyes against the pain and only see shades of purple: Dusty’s failed purple restaurant, Lib’s Purple Hearts, a froth of purple lilacs on an empty bed, the purple of Jimmy’s gangrenous leg, the springtime purple of our hills, the purple of my dad’s raging face, the purple of Clay’s newborn face, the piece of purple satin Shannon always looked for when we sat down to read on our mother’s rag rug.
Chapter Sixteen
MY PHONE WAKES ME. It’s Ray’s oldest daughter, Autumn. She and a couple of her friends missed the bus. Can I give them a ride to school? And can I promise not to tell her folks?
I say sure, like I always do, and check my clock. It’s 7:45 A.M.
It takes me a minute to figure out where I am and how I got here.
I made it home on my own. I made it to bed. I made it through the night.
I have a bad headache and a knot as hard and round as a silver dollar throbbing a couple inches behind my left ear, but the headache could be a lot worse and the lump is easily covered by my hair.
My face could be a lot worse, too, but it’s bad enough. I assess the damage in my bathroom mirror. There’s a small bright red cut above my eye and reddish-purple bruising on my left cheekbone and jaw. My lower lip is slightly swollen but not unattractive. There are women who pay cosmetic surgeons good money to get lips like this.
I find some old painkillers in my medicine cabinet left over from a previous injury. I take two and stand numbly in my bathroom trying to collect my thoughts and set everything straight in my mind. When I do, I get a sick feeling in my stomach that’s unrelated to the goose egg on my head.
The man who did this to me is out there, armed, angry, still in full possession of his balls, and looking for my sister with the intent of having a persuasive conversation with her.
I remember she wasn’t here when I got home last night. I tried calling her on the cell phone number Pamela Jameson gave me but got no answer. Shannon told me she doesn’t have a cell. She knew I’d be suspicious right away if the number she gave me didn’t have a New Mexico area code.
My bathroom window faces the side of my house where I park my car. I glance outside and see my yellow Subaru, covered in a dusting of white, and a car parked next to it. I’m relieved at first until I look closer and see that it isn’t Shannon’s car. It’s the blue rental Boris is driving.
I tiptoe across the hall from the bathroom to my bedroom, take my .45 out of the lockbox in my closet, insert a fresh magazine, ease a round into the chamber, then make my way silently toward the living room and kitchen.
Boris is sitting comfortably at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him, smoking and reading a newspaper. He’s exchanged his white T-shirt for a black one, but other than that he looks exactly the same.
His chrome-plated revolver is lying on the table next to an empty beer bottle he took out of my trash that he’s using to put his ashes in. He taps his cigarette against the lip of the bottle, picks up his gun with his other hand, and points it at me as soon as he hears the floor creak. When he looks over and sees my gun pointing at him, he smiles beneath his mustache.
“So what are we doing now? Shooting each other?”
He waves the .357 at me dismissively and sets it down again. He picks up his coffee cup.
“I don’t like your bathrobe,” he tells me.
It’s a short, white terrycloth robe with Pinto patches of brown and black.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“If woman is going to wear robe that looks like animal, it should look like leopard or tiger. Not cow.”
“It’s not cow. It’s a pony print.”
“There’s nothing sexy about ponies either.”
“I don’t care about being sexy. I care about being comfortable.”
“This is your problem.”
“I don’t have any problems except for you, Boris.”
“Stop calling me Boris. I hate this name. I have a cousin Boris. He is pig who owes me money. Call me Vlad.”
“Is that your name?”
“No, but this cousin I like better.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an open package of Slim Jims. He breaks one in half, feeds it to Gimp, who’s been lying beneath the table this entire time, and gives him a pat. The same trick Shannon used.
Gimp wags his tail.
“I want you out now,” I tell him with my gun still pointed at him.
“I’m not going anywhere. You want coffee?”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, too. Very serious. I thought I made you understand that yesterday.”
He fixes me with his black stare.
“If you were going to call police, you would have already called. For some reason you don’t want them involved, so this means the question of your sister is only between you and me.”
I wrench my gaze away from his.
He gets up from the table and goes to the kitchen counter where he pours a second cup of coffee.
“I think we can come to agreement where I don’t have to hurt you again,” he says.
“And where I don’t have to hurt you again?” I counter.
He walks back to the table and sets the cup down in front of the chair opposite him and takes his seat.
“There will be no trust. We agree on this, right? But we can maybe also agree to keep your pretty face and my balls safe from harm. What you say?”
I don’t say anything.
“I realized after we talked yesterday you don’t have a clue what’s going on with your sister. Your little gift to Junior shows it even more.”
We both glance at the package on the table wrapped in Santa Claus paper. Knowing I referred to myself as Aunt Shae-Lynn makes me feel suddenly vulnerable. I’d prefer to be standing here naked in front of him rather than have him know I have feelings for Shannon’s unborn baby.
“It’s clear for me you don’t know shit about this woman, and you don’t know where she is. That makes two of us. So I’m going to sit here and wait.”
“What if I find her first and make sure sh
e never comes back here?” I ask.
“You still have to come back here.”
“So what are you going to do? Hang out in Jolly Mount indefinitely, waiting for me to give up my sister? Aren’t you going to a lot of trouble over this? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for your friend to just buy someone else’s baby?”
He shrugs.
“It’s not that easy. Besides, this is personal. Like I told you.”
He stretches his arms out over his head and sighs.
“This is nice. I don’t mind. I like it here. I think I’ll make a fire.”
My cell phone rings. It’s sitting on a side table next to the front door. We both look over at it.
“I checked your voice-mail,” he tells me. “There was nothing from your sister.”
I don’t show any sign that I care one way or the other if he listened to my messages. I answer my phone.
It’s Brandi. She needs a ride to the pediatrician and back. Her appointment’s in an hour. Her car won’t start this morning and Dusty isn’t available, she explains awkwardly.
I tell her I’ll be there.
I return to my bedroom without saying another word to the thug in my kitchen. I have to get dressed, which isn’t going to be an easy process.
I pull on a pair of white leggings and a low-cut pink sweater covered in big white snowflakes. Next comes a quilted silver ski jacket with a white fur-trimmed hood and matching silver fur-trimmed boots with pom-poms on the ends of the laces.
I had a fling once with an ex-professional baseball player from Kansas City who I met while he was testifying on Capitol Hill about his steroid use. He dressed me like a Barbie doll and I taught him math. I’ve kept some of the outfits he bought for me for those days when I want to pretend I’m not real. I believe this particular one also came with a pink stuffed poodle in booties and a pair of bejeweled silver skis that I’ve lost somewhere along the way.
I haven’t worn the jacket in a long time. I check the pockets and find a pair of mirrored pink sunglasses along with some cotton candy-flavored lip balm.
“Much better,” Vlad comments from behind his newspaper when I reappear. “Much better to be snow slut than housewife dressed like pony.”
“What do you know about Kozlowski?” I ask him.
He makes his usual shrug.
“Not much. He’s pimp. Worse than pimp. He’s lawyer who specializes in adoptions between girls in trouble and rich couples who pay anything for healthy white baby. But rumor is he goes even further. He finds girls before they’re pregnant and convinces them to get pregnant in order to sell their babies.”
This new bit of information is disgusting, but I don’t let any emotion show on my face.
“So you know him?” he asks.
“A little.”
“He’s not as good-looking as me.”
“I don’t like mustaches.”
“I don’t like your robe. You took off the robe. I can shave the mustache.”
I don’t comment. I pick up my keys and start for the door. I’m not going to bother to tell him to leave again. It will only make him stay.
“Oh, Sweetie Pie,” he calls out to me, exaggerating his accent and making the American domestic endearment sound all the more ridiculous. “Can you stop at market on your way home and bring me good crusty bread—not that sliced spongy shit—and some vodka, some red wine, and some chicken? I’m going to make a paprikash.”
“I thought you were Russian.”
“Russian father, Hungarian mother. What about you?”
“No father, no mother.”
“Interesting. Usually there is at least a mother and she can plead immaculate conception if she doesn’t want to remember the father.”
He blows a wreath of smoke around his head and continues to study me.
“So you are like Thumbelina? An old witch gives seed to barren woman. She plants it, and a beautiful flower grows, and when the bud opens there you are asleep in the petals, a tiny ballerina cop.”
I stick my gun in my pocket and put on my pink sunglasses.
“Something like that,” I tell him.
The snowfall was light but still enough to make the roads slightly treacherous.
During the drive I try Shannon’s cell phone again and get no answer. I think about calling Kozlowski, but I’m not sure exactly how I want to deal with him yet so I decide to wait.
I think about calling Pamela. She’s supposed to have dinner with Jamie tonight. At the time we parted company, she wasn’t sure if she wanted me to come along or not. I decide to wait and call her later, too. I don’t want to arouse any suspicions.
Part of me feels like I should go back to the house and wait for Shannon to show up in order to keep her away from the Russian. Falling back into the role of protector is instinct for me. But another part of me is feeling used and is more than a little pissed off at her lies and the way she showed up for one day and then disappeared again. I don’t want any harm to come to her, but at the same time the problems she’s facing right now are of her own making. I also remind myself that she’s managed to survive very nicely for the past eighteen years without any help from me.
I decide I’m not going to be her bodyguard or her mommy or her conscience. I’ll be her sister, which means I’ll worry about her, I’ll loan her anything she wants, and I’ll lecture her if I get the opportunity, but I won’t try to control her and I won’t pay her debts.
Ray and Vonda’s new house is the size and shape of a barn, constructed of yellow siding, with white shutters on the windows and a completely unnecessary white picket fence surrounding the yard. It sits at the end of a long, winding driveway at the top of a lumpy, bare hill that reminds me of a fat woman’s freshly shaved knee.
Behind the house is the beginning of the same forest that stretches for miles all the way to my house, but as for their own property there’s not a single tree visible and the new shrubs and bushes Vonda planted are only about a foot high. She adheres to the slash-and-burn school of landscaping.
Their old house was small, but I get the feeling when I talk to Ray that he preferred it. It only had one bathroom and their two daughters had to share a room, but according to Ray, now that each girl has her own room, they fight even more than they used to and more noise comes out of each separate room than ever came out of the one. And now that they have three bathrooms, he can never get into any of them.
I park and toot my horn.
The front door bangs open and sixteen-year-old Autumn comes clunking down the walk in three-inch-high platform sandals that make her sound like a horse and move like a giraffe. She’s followed by two of her friends, all of them talking at the same time in a high-speed, high-pitched unintelligible garble. I can occasionally make out the words, “she goes,” and, “he was like,” and, “you know.”
They all wear variations of the same open-toed sandals, the same tight, torn jeans resting low on their hips, and the same tight T-shirts, each with a different profound proclamation written across the front: “Your Future Ex-Girlfriend” and “Blonde” and “Save the Drama for Your Mama.” They each have an armload of bangle bracelets and ears bristling with multiple earrings. Their fingernails are painted various shades of red and orange and their toes are painted a matte blue.
Even though it’s barely forty degrees, they aren’t wearing coats because they’re afraid it will make them look fat; meanwhile the rolls and bulges of hip and belly flesh spilling out over their jeans don’t seem to bother them. These are not small girls. Each of them has on a skimpy cropped hooded sweatshirt that she wears unzipped.
I know it took at least three hours, two bags of chips, and a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew for them to arrive at these ensembles last night in one of their bedrooms. The thought makes me sleepy.
“Good morning, ladies,” I greet them.
They pile into the backseat.
I watch them in my rearview mirror.
“So I guess I can spare you the lecture
on how you need to be more responsible and it’s not good to lie to your parents.”
“Yeah, we remember it from the last time,” Autumn says.
“And the time before that,” one of her friends adds and they all laugh.
The girls talk nonstop during the entire drive at a breathless, mumbled speed that makes it impossible for me to understand any part of their conversation even if I wanted to.
When I pull into the parking lot I remind them they each owe me five bucks and they all start digging in their purses and backpacks.
The high school hasn’t changed much since I graduated from it back in the ’80s. It’s a long, low, redbrick, utilitarian, L-shaped building. There’s nothing remarkable, interesting, or unique about it. Slap bars on the windows and it could be a prison. Park ambulances in front of it and it could be a hospital. They put desks inside it so it’s a school.
The football field, on the other hand, has been through multiple renovations and improvements since my time here: new scoreboard, new bleacher seats, new lights for night games, improved sound system, a bigger sign with bigger letters made up of brighter red lightbulbs that proclaims the field to be HOME OF THE JOLLY MOUNT GIANTS. Even though Ivan Z played for the Centresburg Flames, there’s a framed poster-sized photo of him breaking a tackle during a Penn State game. Next to it, hanging behind the counter of the new, much bigger snack bar, is one of him shaking hands with Mike Ditka after he signed his contract to play with the Bears.
I pull up to the curb. The buses have all departed after dropping off their passengers. The last straggling students are wandering inside the building. The courtyard leading to the front doors is almost deserted except for a burly, shaggy-headed kid with a goatee leaning against a wall, dressed entirely in baggy olive drab, and one of the sparkling Marines I saw at the mall yesterday standing ramrod straight next to the flagpole. They’re both talking earnestly to boys with backpacks slung over their shoulders: one selling drugs, the other selling the military.
“The Marines recruit in front of the school?” I ask.
“Yeah. There’s usually two of them,” Autumn answers me. “They’re here before school and when we get out, but they can’t come inside.”