Benighted

by Kit Whitfield

  “Lola.” Hugo’s voice stops my words as they fall from my mouth, tumble and scatter on the floor like pebbles.

  “On a positive note, Lola,” Ms. Townsend continues with a businesslike sigh, her voice still at a soft pitch, “you’ll be pleased to hear that because of what’s happened, we’ve discussed the case of you and Sean Martin a few days earlier than expected, and decided that you should not be disciplined. We thought you’d like to know that before you make any decisions about what to do.”

  “But you were going to straw me. I was supposed to be strawed.” The meeting was three days from now. In two days I was going to prepare myself, wash my hair, get some speeches ready in my defense. They can’t just be making a decision now, when I’m not even wearing my good suit.

  “Your record is good, and it’s kept on being good after that event. And I think we can all agree that the circumstances were—well, worse than you could expect. It’s good news, Lola.” She keeps saying my name. “I hope you’re pleased.”

  “Pleased.”

  “But, now you have to decide what to do.” She shuffles some papers. The others watch me. I want Hugo to speak to me, but he’s just looking at me, and I have to shake out of myself the urge to reach for his hand. “Most people have taken temporary transfers. Do you think that’s something you’d like to do?”

  “Transfers.” I can’t go away. I don’t know anyone in another city. Becca lives here, Leo, Paul. Who could I talk to? “I—I don’t think I could afford a move, to rent somewhere else, I mean, I don’t have much money saved or anything, I—I don’t know…” They can’t mean I’m not safe here. I’m never safe here. Never, and things happen, I lose blood and pieces of flesh and—how would I move?

  “Well, you just take some time to think about it. We could deal with accommodation somehow if that’s a problem. The alternative is staying. You can carry on working here; I won’t say we don’t need the staff. If that’s what you decide, I’d suggest certain precautions, maybe staying with a friend or family rather than living at your own address.”

  “My address.”

  “Yes, it would be quite easy to trace you. Somewhere else might be safer.”

  So I can’t go home. My hideout is discovered. I’m locked out of my kitchen and I’ll have to eat somewhere else, my little blue bedroom is forbidden me and how am I going to sleep in another bed? The pillows will be the wrong thickness, the sheets won’t be the texture I know. I can’t sleep.

  “You’ll need to give us a contact number, but don’t tell us the address. You should be as discreet as possible. Assuming this works for you. Do you have family you can go to?”

  “My sister.” My voice isn’t certain, it’s stunned. Would Becca even take me in?

  “Though if you wish to be extra cautious, someone less easy to trace. A friend, perhaps? Do you have a boyfriend?”

  No one knows about Paul. When I’m with him, no one knows where I am. Can I really go to him and expect him to take on a commitment, a fugitive, risk his life and have to see me every minute he’s at home?

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do this.”

  “It’s all right,” Hugo says. His tone is as flat as ever, but he leans forward a little, putting his bulky shoulders between her and me. “I think we’ve finished here. And you don’t need to decide now.”

  There’s quiet as the others look at him, and then Jones puts down the papers he was holding. “All right,” he says. “That should be enough.”

  I rise before they tell me to go, stumble and hit my hip on the chair as I stand. They sit in their seats, balanced in them, held up. My limbs half remember how to walk, it feels queer and wrong but I move forward. I don’t look over my shoulder as I go out of the door.

  When Becca lets me in, she has Leo on her hip. He’s holding his head up now, eyes round as marbles, the brown irises huge in his face. He makes a noise of pleasure to see me and flaps his arm, and something in me breaks.

  “Look, it’s Auntie May,” Becca says, and hands him over to me. I take hold of him, wrap my arms around his small body, hold his head against mine. He’s warm and smooth in my arms, scented with powder, but still he’s too little to hide behind.

  “Come in, May, I was just making some tea,” Becca says, wiping her hands on her trousers. This doesn’t make sense, Becca never wiped her hands on her trousers or her eyes on her sleeve; she scolded me for doing it. Where’s my sister?

  “You seem—okay,” I say, my hand around Leo’s head for support. Fine hairs cling to my palm, and his scalp is soft and hot. My fingers stray over the empty patch on his skull, the great gulf where nothing but a layer of skin covers his brain, and I lift him up, hold him steady.

  Becca sighs, not sadly but calm, as if she’d just woken from a deep sleep. “I feel fine. Lionel hasn’t called, before you ask. Nothing’s happened. We’ve just had a nice day, Leo and I. We went out to the park for a walk, it’s a beautiful day for the time of year.”

  “You took him for a walk?”

  “Yes.” She pours tea.

  “Which park?”

  “Well, Queens. It’s nearest.”

  “I—I took him to different ones.”

  “Well, I’m not as energetic as you.” Becca sits cross-legged on the sofa and smiles. Her feet are bare.

  “I could have taken him out.”

  “Well, you haven’t been taking him out these last couple of weeks, May.” She cocks her head at me, admonishing.

  “I—things have happened.” She’s taking him to the parks. What am I going to do?

  “Oh, Mom came to visit the other day,” Becca says, picking up some of Leo’s clothes from beside the sofa and folding them.

  “Why are you folding those?” I say. I sound confused. “They’re so small already.”

  “Hmp.” Becca nods at me with a critical grin. “Well, you were never the one for domestic tasks.”

  “I can be domestic.” I can. If she’d seen me cleaning my plates, painting my walls, sweeping my floor, she’d know I’m not the scruffy little kid she grew up alongside. Once I had my own place, I learned what it meant, and I got old enough to do chores. I help Paul keep his place tidy. She doesn’t know it, but if I’m in the house, I help. I’m not a burden.

  “Anyway, Leo and Mom are hitting it off, I think. He was so good. He didn’t cry once.”

  “Oh.”

  “She asked about you.” Becca looks at me, her face a mixture of caution and censure. She knows this is risking an argument.

  I put a cushion under my head and lean back. “She asked about me?”

  “Yes, she wanted to know how you were.”

  “What did you say?”

  Becca shrugs, brushes her hair back. “I said you were fine. That I’d been seeing quite a lot of you, that you’d been giving me a lot of help with Leo.”

  “I—I have been helping.” I’ve been around here a lot. Becca’s had a lot of sleep because of me, a lot of fresh fruit from the shops, a lot of free hours. I have been useful. I look at my sister, resting back on the sofa, her face calmer than I’ve seen it in months, and Leo bats his hands against me, showing off his arms, enjoying himself. The room smells of talcum powder, and I’m starting to understand how tired I am. The word tomorrow drifts into my mind, and I can’t handle it. All I can think now is that I’m comfortable on this sofa, how much effort it would be to stand up and leave.

  “May, are you all right? You look a little gray.”

  “Gray.” Our mother used to call me peaky. You have to eat your greens, May, you look far too peaky. Don’t wear that, the color makes you look peaky. Peaks pushed through me, angles came out in my face like mountaintops above clouds. Becca called me spiky; sharp-edged things inside me forcing their way out into the light.

  “May—” Becca brushes her hair off her forehead, the old gesture that’s come back since the baby, and leans forward. “Is something wrong?”

  “What?”

  “You’re just sitting a
nd staring and repeating everything I say. Is there something bothering you?”

  Leo struggles in my arms, leans back against me. He wants space. When he learns to walk, there’ll be no stopping him; he’ll run right out into the world without a backward look. “I don’t feel very well,” I say.

  “Are you coming down with something?”

  “No.” I blink. There’s a blue haze, and I can’t wake my voice up. “No. Someone’s died.”

  “Died?” I see Becca sit up on the couch, come to attention. Concerned, puzzled. Not threatened, nothing after her. Her face, frowning, is still pretty, and the word in her pleasant accent has no meaning. A story in the paper. Nothing real.

  “A boy I worked with. Someone shot him.” Leo pants against me, and I lay him down on a little mat in front of the sofa. I don’t know how to handle him.

  “Who?” She knows it means something to me. She’s trying to be involved.

  “No one’s been caught. But we think we know who did it. We don’t know where to find him.”

  Becca’s hand covers her mouth. The nails are unmanicured, but the fingers taper, shapely and long.

  All at once the weight of my head is too much for me, and I lie down. Becca’s image floats horizontal, and I can’t get my eyes to right it. “They think he might be after me.”

  “I—I don’t understand, May. What’s happening?”

  I shut my eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “May, wake up!” I open them, shade them with my hand. Becca’s not sitting cross-legged anymore, she’s on her feet, and she’s taken Leo in her arms. “You have to tell me everything that’s happening.”

  My voice comes out like a wail. “You won’t like it.”

  “I don’t care.” In her tone I hear years of discipline, protecting Leo from harm, pulling him away from the curb. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  If I close my eyes, it can be as if I was telling a dream. “I arrested a prowler. A man who was out on purpose. He almost killed my partner. I interrogated him. He’s crazy, I think. He’s got a grudge against us. Someone who interrogated him with me was shot last night. They think it might be this man, and he might be after me, too.”

  “Why?” The question is hushed, and I don’t look at her.

  I can’t even shrug. “He seemed the type.”

  “May. May, open your eyes.”

  “I’m tired, Becca.”

  “May, look at me, this is serious.”

  “I’m so tired.”

  “May, we have to talk about this.”

  “There’s nothing to say. Maybe we’ll catch him before he kills me.” My body is solid, tangible. There’s no way I can conceive not being alive, not ever feeling anything again. Even in this dull confusion, I can’t understand it.

  I open my eyes a crack, and Becca is sitting opposite me. Leo is in her arms, restless; he wants to be put down so he can kick his legs, but she isn’t letting him go. The poise of her upright spine is almost military. “There is something to talk about, May,” she says. “What about Leo?”

  “Leo?” I look at her properly, but I can’t lift my head. My skull is full of lead, dull base metal weighing me down. “Leo wants to lie on the mat. You should let him go.”

  “May, if there’s someone after you—what if they follow you?”

  “They followed Nate. Forensics said they followed him two hundred yards along the road.”

  “Oh, my God.” She hoists Leo and stands. “May, I’m sorry to do this, but you have to leave.”

  “Leave?” I say the word, and as I say it my ears start to ring. “I just got here.”

  “May, you said there was a man following you, a crazy man. What if he comes here? Leo’s here, May. How can you take chances with his life?”

  “I’m risking Leo’s life.” I’m doing this. She holds Leo as a block between us, there’s discomfort in her tone. She doesn’t want this. She wants the discomfort away, and me with it.

  “I am sorry, May, really I am. If you knew how I hate doing this—”

  “Doing what?” I sit up. My head sings. “Cutting me off? Sending me away?”

  “This isn’t about you, really…”

  “I see that.”

  “Oh, May, don’t take it like that. Please?”

  “Don’t take it like that.” My words are flat in my own ears. “How am I taking it?”

  Becca stiffens, raises herself to be tall. “I am sorry to do this. If it wasn’t a question of Leo, I wouldn’t have to, but I can’t take any risks with his life. If you love him, you’ll understand that.”

  “Since when did you become the arbitrator of love, Becca?”

  “He’s my son.”

  “I’ve been good to you, Becca. I’ve helped you every day. I’ve shopped for you, I’ve looked after Leo. I have helped you.”

  “You’ve helped Leo, at least.” She looks away the moment she says this.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You haven’t spent much time with me, have you? You’ve come, picked him up, and left.”

  “You said you wanted to sleep.”

  She shakes her head. “Let’s not do this.”

  “And I’ve been here the past few weeks.”

  “You hardly have a thing to say to me, May. I’m sure Leo doesn’t press your many buttons.”

  “That’s what this is about? I thought you were wild with concern for your son.”

  “I am. Oh, May, let’s not do this.”

  “No. You say things, you—sandbag me with these things, and then you say ‘Let’s not do this’ and expect it all to go away? I always knew you were one for the last word, but this is—you’re not this stupid, Becca, you never were.”

  “Stop it!” Leo starts to cry. Both of us react. Becca turns her head and I start to my feet. She looks away from him at me. Our eyes meet, and the single second it takes stretches out for a long time before I sit down. “I’ll—put him down in the other room,” she mutters.

  “Are you just going to let him cry?”

  “He’s my son! It’s not up to you. You handle your children your way, and let me handle mine.”

  “I don’t have children.” My voice is dead. I stare straight ahead and my face doesn’t move at all.

  “And whose fault is that? Mine?” I say nothing. Leo sobs between us. “Oh, May, I’m sorry. This isn’t—May, I’m just—scared for Leo.”

  I draw in a shuddering breath. “I know.” This is my sister. I can’t be hating my sister.

  “No, May. I mean—be honest. If you were in my position, wouldn’t you be saying the same?”

  “Yes.” Truth falls out of my mouth, plummets to the ground. “Yes, I would.”

  “I’m sorry for what I said.” The schoolgirl phrasing stabs me in two places at once. The shelter of it, the life protected from the world that swallowed me up. But there’s the familiarity, too, my sister who always talks this way, even when her own life is falling apart. “Really. I’m so sorry. I wish you hadn’t taken it like this. But it’s not your fault. I wish I could have put it to you better. But—it’s just…” She sits down on the sofa, strokes the head of her crying son. They’re far away from me. “Leo’s everything I have, May. If anything happened to him, I’d die.” She looks down. “I’m telling you the truth now, so I hope you’re listening. I don’t want to have to go through saying all this again. I’ve heard nothing from Lionel, nothing. He’s still abroad. I sent messages to let him know when Leo was born. I got Leo’s blood group tested on my own and sent him the results. I even—named him for his father. But I haven’t heard a thing. And it isn’t because he’s too hurt to speak to me. I know that now. He was upset at the time. Now he’s—it’s just easier for him not to have to come and sort this out. He doesn’t care too much, May. He just doesn’t care enough. But if Leo’s all I have out of that marriage, I can’t be sorry.” She ducks her head, rests it on Leo’s. “Don’t expect me to say this again. Leo’s everything I have left out of six years
of doing everything I could to make a marriage work. He’s all I have left. I can’t take any chances with him. If anything happened to him, it would be the end of me. I’m sorry to do this to you, May, really, I’m so sorry. I hope they catch the man soon, so you can come back. Leo loves you.” She squeezes her eyes shut. For a moment, I think it might happen, but she doesn’t say she loves me. “You’re good with him. You’ve been a great help to me, more than anyone, and I am grateful. But please, for me, just do this?”

  For me.

  She didn’t speak for Leo. She asked me to do it for her.

  “Of course I don’t want to put him at risk,” I say. My voice breaks, but I won’t, I won’t cry. “I—I didn’t even think about it when I came today…”

  She could say, of course you didn’t, it would take a mother to think these things. She doesn’t. Instead, what she says is “That’s not your fault. You live in danger all the time. You must get used to it in some ways.”

  I shake my head, my eyes closed. There are no teardrops to fly from my eyelids as I shake. “Not like this.”

  Becca swallows. “What are you going to do?”

  “I—I don’t know. I can’t go home.”

  “Do you think he’s watching your apartment?” The concern is back, she speaks softer.

  “He could be. I can’t risk it.”

  “Where will you stay?”

  It’s a weapon, and I hesitate a moment before throwing it. “I’ve been seeing someone for a few weeks. Maybe I can stay with him.”

  “Oh.” It’s very quiet. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s nice.” I stare at my hands. “He treats me well. He’s a social worker, very respectable.” Social worker, not DORLA. I spare her the wondering if he’s like me or like her. “But I don’t know if he will. I only met him after Leo was born. He might not be willing.” If this ends things with Paul, I’ll stay in my apartment and wait for Seligmann to come and get me. Even as I think this, I know it’s not true. I’ll keep going. I always do.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Paul Kelsey. He lives in north Sanctus.”