by Shannon Kirk
Once again, I did not correct her. I let her believe my swims are mere practicalities of sport. She, in her enduring Catholic insistence, would never be willing to accept my intangible confidence in nature. She’d never accept the exaltation I give in my mind to ancient humanist philosophers like Epicurus and Lucretius. Blasphemy, she’d think, I think. She’s “so stiff,” so “stalwart, impenetrable,” Aunty Liv has bled into comments about her. Is she so stalwart? She sure does act stalwart and impenetrable. What is truth? Am I permitting just a one-dimensional identity for her to allow for a simple definition, an easy way to reject her in whole? Maybe I need to try harder. In some ways, I wish I had Aunt Sister Mary’s fortitude, like a brick house. Like a granite church. So unlike my faith of water, which seeps through my hands if I try to cup it. I am a colander; she is a stone bowl.
“I know there’s something going on between you and your aunt Lynette,” she said.
Bam. A direct slap to my facade.
“Seriously. Can’t you call her Liv like everyone else? You’re so stuck-up,” I said, like a brat, which I hated to do. But I had to deliver a caustic slap, I had to pretend to act my brittle age, because I needed Sister Mary off the scent. I had never before talked to her like this, never told her she was stuck-up, never called her out for calling Aunty Liv by her formal name. I frankly never before and really now don’t question Sister Mary’s formality, nor do I wish to debate her choice to be formal. If stiffness is so important to her, so be it. But I had to slap her with my words on the GC’s bench. And, being so stung by my words and shocked at how I acted, she leaned back, drew in her never-glossed lips, and swallowed.
“Mary Olivia, what has come into you? What exactly is going on? I know you’re hiding something.”
My first caustic slap didn’t work. And so she forced me to up the smug and, like a candidate for president, deflect from my own sins, to hers.
I hated to do it. But I had to. I couldn’t allow or afford Aunt Sister Mary asking questions or snooping around.
“So Aunt . . . Sister . . . Mary,” I said, stressing the word Sister, but spacing out my words in a calm delivery. “Tell me. If you’re so interested in getting into secrets, what’s this secret you hold, eh? Why, exactly, did you quit the church, anyway? What about how Aunty Liv mentioned a man coming to the Rye coach house in the night, and you screaming?”
Frankly, I didn’t know if Aunt Sister Mary had a secret at all. My mother never, ever whispered to Aunty Liv in front of me; she never gossiped about anything in front of me. My mother always told me to never be cruel. “Gossip is for the addle-minded,” she’d say, adding a smile in her whimsical, frilly way and scrunching her nose all cutelike. She said things like, “Babycakes, I don’t care what grades you get. What I’m most proud of is your teacher adding a comment on how courteous you are to her, and to the other students, and how you never gossip.”
And it’s true, before duplicity and insanity and selective amnesia came into my life, before I lost my mother, I did want to be kind, because it was natural for me, easy. I had no energy to focus on other people’s flaws, for I obsessed on my own, with my own to doubt. And then over the last two years, I was vacant, or apathetic, or blindly invested in study or tutoring refugees, but not drilling into their backgrounds, and so had no cause or energy to gossip or be cruel.
But on the GC’s bench two days ago with Aunt Sister Mary Patience Pentecost, I threw my instincts for kindness, and my wish to not engage in debate with anyone, out the resort’s stained-glass windows to the holy rolling sea.
“So what’s this secret, Sister Mary?” I taunted, like a child.
“What did you say?” She coiled back.
“I asked what your secret is, why you left the church, or was it, really, yeah, you were kicked out?” Deflect, deflect, deflect. Get her to not want to ask again about what’s going on with Aunty Liv.
“How dare you!” she said while standing and slapping my face, for real.
She slapped my face.
I deserved it.
Standing above me and folding her long, lean body at the waist, she seethed in my face, “You know nothing. A man. A man coming to the coach house. It’s not what you think, not some dirty sex with a nun secret, Mary Olivia. Not even close. But my truth is none of your business.” And then she stormed off, but turned about ten feet away to say, “How dare you,” upon a snarl.
Aunt Sister Mary Patience Pentecost was so furious, she left before we were scheduled, took an Uber all the way from the Cape to Rye, and barricaded herself in the coach house—something I knew when she texted me and my father: I’m home at Rye, in my rooms, don’t call or knock. Leave me be. I have all I need in here to survive the storm.
I, on the other hand, drove home as scheduled, about midday, with Manny, my father taking his own car. I didn’t let on to them anything about why Aunt Sister Mary left early. Manny and I drove straight back to his house by Haddock Point, and I told him I was going to go on and visit with Aunty. I asked him to let me go alone so I could visit with her for a couple of hours before dinner.
I could delude myself into packing my wake-up into a single second, the one physical event of Aunt Sister Mary slapping my face with a definite thwack. But that’s too dramatic, too literal, too neat and tied up in a bow, easy for Hollywood, necessary for a strict ninety-minute movie. Like a cliché lightbulb pinged over my head in a Road Runner cartoon. The reality is, I’d been scraping and crawling for the lip of insanity’s well, clawing to really emerge, ever since I slipped back down after finding the woman in the barn, clawed up but slipped again when I figured her for the woman on the rocks two years ago, clawed up a few feet but slipped again when I found the wool-suited skeleton. Straining through acting, crying in steam rooms, hiding my thoughts, pushing my mind at the GC was all me clawing, clawing, clawing on the rocks of my well, straining to emerge. Sister Mary’s slap was the rope that met my hands stretching from the depths, seeking any help to pull me out. She pulled me out.
I was ready.
That was yesterday. And I haven’t returned to Manny’s since. I didn’t get a chance to tell him about all these secrets at Aunty’s. Did he find out on his own? Is he alive?
Yesterday, upon returning from the GC, I cut through the secret bramble trail and hit upon the space of the boarded burned cottage hole. I followed along through the stone path toward Aunty’s lawn, brushing up the scent of rosemary and basil from the herb garden by the side room on the barn, and then, to my right, the spiral sunflower congress. The flower heads bloomed, swaying in their height in the high winds. I heard Aunty humming and singing in the side room to her patient woman.
“I whistle in the thistle, and I stop at the rock.” She sang these two lines over and over. I walked softer past the barn, tiptoeing down the path to her front door. Deviating from the path, I visited her favorite willow, sprang the bottom latch on that birdhouse she and I made long ago, and extracted the hidden set of all the house keys, which includes the front door and the key to Aunty’s bedroom, which has access to the attic.
The hydrangeas and all the other flowers bloomed in the August sunshine, seemingly lifting their petals to touch my skin as I passed. Keys in hand, I headed toward Aunty’s blue front door. Oh, to emerge, to awake from cloudy dreams to definition and enhancements. To have purpose and questions and to be seeking answers and resolutions, however horrific. To be alive, to know I’m real. To be empowered, having chosen to take the keys, which were always there, and unlock rooms in literal and figurative ways. To have power. I clenched my hands in fists to bottle the thrill of being in command of my own mind.
The hibiscus petals at the entrance flopped as I passed, the size of them outgrowing the support of flower veins. But the flower’s flopping largeness didn’t stall me—a flashing from the windows above stopped me. Something overhead in the daylight glared. Glared again. Glared again. Three flashes. I love you in flashlight talk.
No, I thought. No way. I’m imagining f
lashes, because I want lighted messages so bad.
I stepped backward off the granite front stoop, craned my head to the attic dormer, and for sure this time saw, clear as day, three flashes.
I love you. Like my mother used to flash me from her cabin to my upstairs room at Aunty’s.
Three more flashes from an attic dormer.
I love you.
And then a series that didn’t quit.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you . . .
Aunty’s singing in the barn wafted to me, giving a sense of safety: Aunty is occupied. “I whistle in the thistle, and I stop at the rock,” she sang from afar.
More flashes from above.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Flashing lights of I love you became a siren call.
My heart ran ahead of me, it beat so fast. I slipped through the front door, up the stairs, down the hall, scraped to the right key for Aunty’s bedroom door, busted through Aunty’s bedroom, up through her stairwell, and burst into the finished attic.
I stalled on the carpet, looking at a woman in a rocker, propped sitting by a dormer with flashlight in hand. Popover on her lap, and a kerchief blinding her hair to the world. A chain wound around her ankle and attached at the other end to a bed leg. The metal scraping I heard on the first night.
My mouth dropped to the floor, as did my body when I lost control of my muscles.
CHAPTER TWENTY
AUNTY
Two years ago
I am an animal nurse.
I lost my baby. My third baby gone.
My love is dead upstairs in Mop’s room. Murdered.
My sister—I’m holding her wrist—is close to death and duct-taped on the burners of my gas stove. But she’s not dead yet.
Her murderer is possibly dead or dying on my kitchen floor—her head bashed in by the bottom of the yellow bowl. My face is cut, my eye punctured, my teeth smashed, my left hand cut and in need of sutures. Blood on my face.
I am an animal nurse. I must act. I must be clinical so the gray clouds won’t come. This is my job. Only my job. I push every emotion I should have out, like I’m trained to do in catastrophic emergency situations. This is war, and I’m on the front line, in the most critical medical tent. Like victims of a mass shooting coming to my ER.
Triage.
There’s several forms of triage. I currently find myself in the mass casualty, low-to-no-resources scenario, and thus must enact the most complex of triage: continuous integrated triage. If I were in the ER, I’d label patients on their chances of survival and dole out the limited medical resources to those with the best chance of survival, leaving to the side the ones with obliterated brains or blown-open hearts, as they have the least chance of survival. I’m known at Saint Jerome’s as the best nurse to build the strategy for and execute incredibly effective, quick, and practical continuous integrated triage. I never undertriage or overtriage.
Shock will help me block reality. Adrenaline will boost my advanced efficiency skills. Here we go. I must act fast before authorities come. Psychologically, I’ll pay later for pushing everything to the back of my brain, for activating only my executive function and none of the emotion or short-term memory in my hippocampus. But I won’t have a chance at any livable later if I don’t do exactly that. So here I am, a robot.
In tonight’s case, I have one medical resource, me, and four people to assess:
Kent Dranal
Assessment: Dead.
Value: Zero. Already dead, he serves humanity no longer. He is worthless. However, his corpse frames me in murder and is thus toxic. I must deal with it.
Cate Dranal
Assessment: Might be dead, significant head injuries, external bleeding on skull and in hair, suspect intracranial bleeding as well; unconscious. Needs CAT and/or PET scans and emergency surgery to remove likely hematoma, blood clot, bleeding in brain. I don’t have the equipment to do scans here and am not trained to perform brain surgery.
Value: Less than zero. She’s possibly dead, possibly seriously brain injured. If she survives, she will exist with diminished mental capacity after a long road of rehab. She will be a drain on medical resources. Also, she is incurably and violently insane and serves no useful value to society. Rather, she is harmful to society. Like Kent, her body frames me in crime and is thus toxic. I must deal with it.
Johanna
Assessment: She might die, is unconscious from unconfirmed quantity and potency of undated pentobarbital vial straight into her neck, unsure if hit vein. I can do nothing medically except wait to see the effects. I am holding her wrist, assessing her pulse, which is weak and dangerously spaced, but it’s there.
Value: Infinite. Johanna has the most value of anyone on earth, and with care and attention, and aggressive medical rehab and maintenance, she could survive to her prior state. I must deal with her, treat her in secret, if she even survives the possibly fatal level of injection she just received. If anyone runs toxicology on her blood and finds the pentobarbital in her, they’ll link it to me.
So what if they link the pentobarbital to me? Shut up. Shut up and work! The reason, Lynette, you fucking imbecile, is you have no idea what Cate Dranal wrote of in her computer, or planted in Kent’s emails—she has his password. She might link pentobarbital to you, which would link to your sister, and then there would be questions about Kent, who will be reported missing, and so will go an investigation . . . think. Then there’s the matter of dead Vicky. No, don’t think, stop thinking. Work.
Me
Assessment: I need to avoid jail, have a serious eye injury, smashed teeth, slashed hand, but these injuries are not life threatening. I am suffering a miscarriage. Blood on my legs.
Value: Limited and specific. My eye throbs, I can’t see out of it, blood muddies my sight, I need stitches on my face and on my hand. The blood seems to have stopped flowing between my legs, but I need to be sure it doesn’t start up again—I can’t be leaving a blood trail of myself around this house and outside and highlighting for black light all the places I’m about to go. I will treat myself first, so I can deal with all three bodies before authorities come, so I don’t go to jail. My relative value to humanity? Well, having lost my third child, almost none. The only value I hold now is the immeasurable value of bringing Johanna, who holds the most value, back to a life worth living. And if I fix her, after that, I am of zero value and can be gone from this cruel life. I refuse to be captured and thrown in jail for even a second of breath on this earth.
In the ER, I would never include in my assessments the relative value of each human life in comparison to the next. So while I much prefer to save the life of a child, as opposed to some haggard drunk past his prime, if the child is brain-dead and the drunk has a bleeding cut I can stitch so he doesn’t bleed out, and it’s only me, and there are no other resources, I’d, in the normal course of business, devote my care to the drunk.
But here, I am assessing the value of each of these lives before me and including in my quick assessment myself.
As I cut a piece of duct tape from Johanna, I look out the bay window to the fire, bright now inside the cottage, but still contained on the bed. I estimate about a half hour before the world descends upon me.
Triage.
I’m the best at triage.
The best triage nurse. Terrific.
I grab an absorbent washcloth and a long section of duct tape off Johanna and, given how thick the gluey adhesive is on this brand of tape, duct-tape the washcloth through the thumb and forefinger of my cut left hand. Next, using a corner of a towel from the laundry basket, I dab away blood on my face and press hard to stem the flow for a good two minutes. I fold the open skin together and slam another section of duct tape I’ve cut from the slumping Johanna over my sliced eye. The pain is unlike any pain ever experienced, but since it is so excruciating, this is my new normal. I work. The tape should hold the fold of the cut
and quell the blood while I work; it won’t last long. I need to work fast. With the rest of the towel, I wipe my legs of the blood and all the spots on the floor where it dripped. I wipe up the vomit too. The heaviest of my blood and the vomit is now soaked up in the towel. I’ll run a mop last, after scooping up all the broken pottery. First: heavy fluids and bodies cleanup. Next: sterilizing cleanup.
In case I start bleeding again, I grab a Kotex from the kitchen bathroom, stick it to a pair of fresh underwear, and pull them on. The bloody towel and old underwear I shove in the oven.
First, Kent.
In nurse training, they teach you how to leverage the full weight of a man, up to double your weight, over your back to drag him to wherever you need to treat him, or in my present case, stash his dead body. I run up to Mop’s room with another section of duct tape. Before slinging the bloodless Kent over my back as trained, I slap the duct tape over the slice in his neck, because I can’t bear to look at it, and I can’t bear to consider his head flopping back and his neck slice ripping more. If his head detaches, I’ll sink into the floorboards and dissolve. I won’t be able to pick up his face and cradle it to my chest. Having slung him over my back, I drag him to the top of the stairs, lay him headfirst toward the top stair, his body long. I slink around him, descend three stairs, and pull at his shoulders. The wool of his suit jacket is scratchy and real and I feel a blip of grief. No, stop. Stop. The wool is wool. Just wool.
In a sliding thunk, sliding thunk, every time his feet hit another tread, we make our way to the first floor and reach the foyer. I drag him across the white marble to the basement door. I repeat the shoulder-drag-sliding-thunk down my basement stairs, then slide him along the limestone floor to my bookcase, the one that is really a door to a hidden wine room. I turn the secret dial lock, push the bookcase; it swivels; I drag Kent inside, exit the wine room, swivel and lock the bookcase in place.