You march across the library and I follow you outside and you head for our love seat. You don’t sit—bad omen—and you make two fists and you seethe. “Oh, fuck it.”
Now you sit—omen reversed—and I sit too. You cross your legs, tights even today, in early summer, like a widow in mourning, and do I put a hand on your knee to remind you of the heat between us? I don’t.
“Mary Kay.”
“Nope. Don’t even try.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nyet.”
“I got shot.”
“That’s nice.”
That’s not nice and I touch the bandage on my temple and you fold your arms. “If you came here looking for pity, you may as well just leave.”
“I know I fucked up. I was in the hospital, Mary Kay. I got shot and I called you… I texted you… Hell, I tried to send you guys a pizza.”
You nod. “Howie died.”
That’s not my fault. Howie was a widower hanging on by a thread, by a poem. “I know. I saw. And I texted you when I read about it and I called you…” I can’t make this about me. “How are you? How was Nomi’s graduation?”
You uncross your legs and clamp your hands over your knees as if you don’t want me to see them, let alone touch them. Your knuckles are brass mountains. Mute.
“Hannibal, I know I fucked up. I’m not trying to make excuses.”
You don’t call me Clarice and your voice is new. “I think you should go.”
“We have to talk about this. You can’t just punish me because I got mugged.”
Foxes are nasty, they kill house cats, and you are no different. “You just don’t get it, Joe. And I’m going back inside.”
“Wait. You have to let me explain what happened.”
“I don’t ‘have’ to do anything. And this is our pattern. I see that now. It’s always me telling you that you don’t owe me an explanation or you telling me that I don’t owe you an explanation and we tried… but it doesn’t work.”
“This is different.”
You shrug. “We’re a bad fit. We’re always apologizing or making big ridiculous leaps that neither one of us are really prepared for. I don’t hate you. But I know this doesn’t work.”
“You can’t do this to me, Mary Kay. You can’t refuse to talk about it.”
“No, Joe. See that’s the thing that you don’t seem to understand about relationships, about women. Your feelings are not my responsibility.”
Yes they fucking are. That’s called “love.” That’s called “us.” “I know that.”
“So let’s be adults. I messed up too. I realize I was coming on way too strong, moving in with you, asking you to never leave me…”
“You were not coming on too strong. I loved all of it.”
“You don’t get to say that after what you did, Joe. Actions speak louder than words. And you sit here and you don’t even understand why I’m mad, do you?”
“You’re mad that I left. But, Mary Kay, I left you a note.”
“A note,” you say. “Yes, you left me a note. Mary Kay, I had to go to L.A. for a family emergency. I’ll call you when I land. I’m so sorry. Love, Joe.”
That is why you’re mad at me, that fucking note. But you memorized that note and I still have a chance. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry, Joe. I care that you didn’t wake me up to tell me what happened. I care that you were vague. When people are together they tell the truth. They don’t say bullshit like ‘family emergency.’ They grab your shoulders. They turn on the lights and they tell you exactly what happened and they ask you to come with them, Joe. That’s what adults do.”
“I’m sorry. Look, it wasn’t family, not exactly. But this girl I dated in L.A., her family is terrible…” It’s true. “And she got sick and—”
“Joe, it’s too late. You’re wasting your time.”
You say that but you don’t move and you’re right but you’re wrong. “Well, how about seeing it from my perspective, Mary Kay. You were married to someone, I know. And God bless him, may he rest in peace, but he dumped every single thing on you every single day. He didn’t hesitate to unload on you at 4:00 A.M. and did you ever think… maybe I was only trying to let you get a good night’s sleep? Did you ever think maybe I did that because I thought that was a good way for me to love you in that moment?”
“Maybe it’s not in your nature to love.”
Goosebumps sprout on my arms and fresh bullets zing my head, my heart. That’s the worst thing you ever said to me and we’re on our fucking love seat and you sigh. “I’m sorry. This is exactly what I didn’t want. I didn’t want a fight, and I do hope your ex is all better, but it’s over, Joe. And you need to accept that.”
I rub my head, just enough to remind you that I am wounded. “Well I don’t think it is.”
“I’m actually happy that you brought Phil into this…” I never should have brought that rat into this. “Because it really is about him. The one day he needed me to be there… I was with you. I’ll never forgive myself for that, Joe. And this whole disappearing act, the wounded warrior bit, you’re right. It does feel too familiar. I’m not gonna spend any more of my time taking care of a man who walks out on me and comes back wounded and needs me to fix it.” You take a deep, end-of-the-book kind of breath, as if you are ready for this damn novel to be over, and then you offer your hand as if you no longer believe in love.
You say that dirty word again. “Friends?”
Love didn’t murder me, but she got what she wanted in her psychotic depressive state. She murdered us. I shake your hand—Friends—and the power goes out all over my body and I walk to the parking lot. I am in no condition to walk, to drive. I find shade beneath a tree.
“So it lives.”
I look up and it’s the Meerkat. She aged while I was gone. Or maybe that’s just me and maybe I’m in denial because she also regressed again. She’s back on Columbine, squinting.
“Nomi,” I say. “Congratulations, graduate. How you doing?”
“Well I didn’t get stabbed in the head.”
“Shot,” I say. “But it’s no big deal.”
She wants to see the wound up close and I tell her to stay where she is because if you are watching us—and I hope you are watching—I want you to know that I’m not using my wound to get attention and I would tear this Band-Aid off my fucking head if I could. She nods. “Cool.”
“Look, I’m sorry about disappearing…”
“Oh, I’ve barely been here. I made some friends in Seattle, been at Don and Peggy’s a lot. Anyway, are we moving back to your house? Cuz the Marshall Suites is so gross and I hate sharing a room with my mom.”
You hate me so much that you moved into Oliver’s old hotel and damn you, RIP Love Quinn. “Well,” I say. “Your mom’s not too happy with me right now…”
She shrugs. “My mom’s never happy. Except when she’s with you.” And then she rocks back and forth on her sneakers that are too young for her, sneakers that light up. “Seriously, Joe, see you soon. I mean it’s fine. It is.”
She says that with such confidence and she knows you in ways that I don’t. She’s known you her whole life and she tells me that she’s right about you, Mary Kay. You are happy when you’re with me and that is the bottom line and I see you in the library. You see me and the Meerkat catching up. You know this is meant to be. The Meerkat takes off—Sorry you got shot in the head—and I look into the window, into your eyes.
You don’t wave but you don’t give me the finger. You turn your back on me right now and pretend to be busy with a Mothball—you’re not—but you’re not done with me. I just have to make things right.
The walk home is brutal and my head is throbbing and I should probably have taken a cab from the ferry to my house and I should probably have lain low on my first day back. I finally give in and pop a pain pill and I pick up your filthy doormat and throw it into the washing machine—I have to get our house ready for you
to come home—and I watch the doormat go round around—it’s the drugs, I hate drugs—and I put my hands on the glass—see the boats go sailing—and I am drooling and sweating and my head is full of tainted cotton candy.
These pills are too much and the doormat is a sailboat. I’m hallucinating. I hear Stephen Bishop in the airport, singing about women in Jamaica and then the music that isn’t real dies and I am back in my house and my feet are on the floor of my laundry room and these are my feet and the doormat isn’t a sailboat.
But I am not alone.
I see a man in the glass. This is Bainbridge and it’s safe but I was gone for two weeks and criminals do this. They watch houses. He probably thought I was gone.
He takes a step forward and I make a fist and his shadow is clearer now and this is Bainbridge and it’s probably a misunderstanding, a neighbor concerned about the sudden activity in the house. But Bainbridge is an island in a state in the country of America, and America is violent and if the man were here on a wellness call, he would say it.
I squint like the Meerkat and take a closer look at his reflection. I see a baseball cap and narrow sloping shoulders. He is short. Short as Shortus. I turn around and it is Shortus but he didn’t pop by my house to make sure I’m okay. He’s armed and I’m empty-handed and slow—drugs are evil—and the blow is fast. Thwack.
Man down, Mary Kay, one of the good ones.
44
People say that victim shaming is a bad thing, but sometimes, the victim should be fucking ashamed. I took a goddamn pain pill on an empty stomach and I didn’t lock my doors, as if I’m some fourth-generation Bainbridge bum fuck who refuses to lock his doors because once upon a time the island was safe and you didn’t have to lock your doors so you know what? I deserve to be tied up by a sixth-generation Bainbridge CrossFit lunatic in his Olympic Mountain hideaway cabin.
Shortus didn’t do this to me. I did this to myself.
I smell Windex. Clorox. Things that end with the letter x, and I can’t punch him—my hands are tied—and I can’t kick him—my legs are locked at the ankles—and I have a head wound and I don’t know karate.
He put a bag on my head. I can’t see. He stuffed a sock in my mouth—I think the sock is dirty—and I wiggle my tongue and this is not how it ends for us. Shortus will not kill me.
Or maybe he will because he’s close now. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”
I make a sound and he spits at the bag over my face. “You worm your way into that library. You worm your way into our lives. That piece-of-shit has-been crybaby drops dead and you worm your way into her house.”
I was right. This is about you. I try to worm the words out of my mouth but the sock won’t let me and he’s on his feet now. Stomp, stomp, stomp. “And the worst part is, I knew it. I knew you were bad news.” You and me both, asshole. “You move here and suddenly all’s I hear about is Joe. He volunteers. He reads a lot. In my head, I’m thinking, Sounds like a fucking pansy. But she won’t shut up about you. So I figure, I gotta meet this guy, see what he’s about. And then I get a look at you and you’re soft. You got no job. You’re a loser. I’m thinking, This poor loser’s no threat. I get you a deal at CrossFit, I let you tag along for beers, even though everyone thinks you’re a fucking snob. But do I worry? Nah. You crash lunch at the diner and you’re talking chick flicks with Melanda. You’re an even bigger pansy than I thought and I think… good. Maybe that feminazi will finally shut up if she gets some good dick in her.”
I knew that lunch with your Friends was a bad idea, Mary Kay, and he’s twisting my words and this is Twitter in real life. I am muted. Blocked.
“I let you mope around in your slick sweaters…” Cashmere isn’t slick, you moron. “I let her go on about how smart you are even though you didn’t even go to college…” Even in Cedar Cove there has to be some asshole talking about college and FUCK YOU, AMERICAN CASTE SYSTEM. “But I’m no dumbass, you sweater-wearing volun-fucking-teer.” The bump on my head is playing Ping-Pong with a hockey puck in the hole in my head and he’s close again. Breathing. “She had it bad for you. You got her to move in with you.” I think I hear his heart. Does he have a knife? “Even then I wasn’t worried. You moved in on her after the has-been finally croaked and all girls go nuts when they’re sad. I wasn’t surprised when you split. I told her myself, You can’t trust a man who doesn’t take care of his body. And I was just about to get back in there.” I smell urine. He’s peeing on me. On my legs. “You shouldn’t have come back, pansy. And you shouldn’t have gone to the library and tried to get her back.”
He zips up and this is why you kill people, because most people are horrible. He kicks me in the balls and it’s so predictable that it doesn’t hurt quite as bad as it would have were there an element of surprise and the pain in my balls is another hockey puck and now my balls are in the game with the hole in my head and the bump on my head and is this how I die? From Ping-Pong?
“The whining, man. Joe came back. I need time to think.” He kicks me in the balls again. “I said, You’re outta your mind. He’s a loser, can’t even commit to CrossFit.” Oh God, he thinks he’s my trainer and he kicks me in the leg and my shin is in the game too now. Ping. Pong. Pain Pong. “I’ve been working that girl for years, and unlike you, I never ran away. Never.”
That’s a kick to my other shin and the Pain Pong is now a tournament, a death match and signs, signs, everywhere signs and I missed every fucking one of them. You called him a saint, truly and the first time you ever told me about him, you were defending his honor. He cleaned your gutters, an animal marking his fucking territory the same way he marks his body with that Cooley Hardware logo, so that you see his last name and think maybe you could be Mrs. Fucking Cooley.
He spits in my face. “No job. No muscles. No nothing. That’s what you are.”
You were wrong about him but you were dead-on about me and I am bad at reading people and how did I not realize that his hardware store is a jealousy trap? He refers to those women in his shop as girls to make you feel old. Endangered. And the reddest flag of all: He gave your daughter a job in his fucking store. No wonder she quit. He probably bugged her ten times a day—So, how’s your mom, Nomi? Tell her Uncle Seamus said hi.
My life doesn’t flash through my eyes, but I remember things I didn’t know that I remember, like Melanda’s notepad in her phone, how she griped about Mary Kay and Seamus: MK’s attachment to Seamus is so weird. I know she was only seventeen when they hooked up and I know it was only five minutes but eeeew. I should have known then, same way I should have known when he blasted Kid Rock at the gym—the remake song about the teenage summer fuckfest by the lake. He’s been carrying a torch for you since you were seventeen years old.
He growls. Close. “Look at how soft you got. What did you even do for the past few weeks, pansy? Cuz I can tell you weren’t working out.”
There is no conversation subject more boring than exercise and this is why it’s dangerous for women to be “nice” to men, Mary Kay.
He swats the side of my head. Ping Pain. Pain Pong. “You split town. You come back outta nowhere and she’s ready to jump your bones. But Saint Seamus is here to make things right.” He got Roman on the Succession quiz, Mary Kay. He’s evil. Pure evil. “Are you listening to me, Jewberg? You’re done with her. It’s over.”
He hits me and he kicks me and it’s March Madness in my head and it’s the World Series of Pain in my balls and if I get out of this, those Big Pharma fuckwits will be getting a strongly worded letter from me. Their little pain pills don’t do shit and he punches me in the face.
“She’s mine, you piece of pussy-ass Hebe shit.” I’m only half Jewish and I whole hate him and you would too if you could hear him right now. “And she’s gonna be mine forever and you know why, Hebe?”
I haven’t heard that word since I was ten years old and he is close now. Breathing at me. On me.
“Because I’m a man, you bookworm little bitch. And in the real
world…” Oh, Shortus, Bainbridge Island is not the real world and in the real world, people in situations like this die. RIP Beck died. She kept a knockin’ but she couldn’t get out and am I next? I flex and I push but I can’t get out and he’s too quiet. I remember that first touch in the library. Your hand in mine. Don’t tell the others. I didn’t, Mary Kay. You did. You told the others. You threw us up on Instagram. You are a fox and you wanted to show off, you wanted to kiss me in the window at Eleven Winery and you wanted everyone to know we were living together. You wanted your Friends to approve and it’s not the pain, it’s not the possibility of death, it’s the fact that we really could have had our family if you had just thrown your arms around me a few hours ago, when I was in the kind of pain that can be healed with a hug. Now you’re going to lose me and I don’t want that for you. You’ve already lost so much.
Shortus yanks me by the neck and my body hits the floor and the Pain Pong tournament is a melee, hockey pucks hurling on every playing field in my body. “I’m not gonna kill you,” he says. “You think it’s so ‘safe’ up here and it is. Our people are good people. But we got animals, Jewboy. We got lots of animals and one of them is going to get you.”
45
My back is up against bark—he strapped me to a tree—and I still can’t see because of the bag on my head. Birds chirp and I can’t call for help. I’m still gagged and Shortus has a rifle. It’s too soon. Love only pulled a gun on me a couple of weeks ago—look how that worked out, she’s dead—and you called this man the Giving Tree and he calls me a tree hugger and I can’t fucking talk. He is close again, close as in armed and for fuck’s sake, America, GET RID OF YOUR GODDAMN GUNS. “Today’s the day you become a fucking man.”
The good thing about a bad childhood is that it prepares you for hell in the adult world and Seamus didn’t cut off my limbs—positive thinking—but he has a bucket of blood—whose blood?—and he’s splashing it on me like holy water and this isn’t a cold and broken hallefuckinglujah. This is grim. The ropes are tight—naval knots and he wasn’t in the fucking Navy but he did go to camp—and a lot of people would lose their shit but unlike the coddled Peach Salingers of this world, I don’t need help when it comes to self-soothing. I know how to survive and I will survive because he said it himself—you have it bad for me—and you want to be with me. You are here for me now, in the blackness of my panic. In my mind I see you on our love seat and you see me and you want me to be okay—you love me—and I don’t want you to worry so I try to make you laugh. I sing because you like it when I sing and you know the tune. How will I know if he’s gonna kill me? I say a prayer but I’m tied to this tree. Shortus breaks my song with a gunshot—pop—and he shoots an animal and I bet it was a rabbit because he spits and grunts, “Sorry, Thumper.”
You Love Me Page 34