Sophie’s Last Stand

by Nancy Bartholomew

  The man I’d seen earlier suddenly reappeared, trying to take me as I pushed open the back gate. He lunged for me, springing out of the shadows that framed the back porch and rushing me. In his hand, he held an ugly black knife. I whirled, dropping my purse as I turned, and stepping into his move, hitting him low and inside with my body as I turned to grip his knife arm with both hands.

  I yelled, guttural and hoarse, and brought his arm down across my thigh, heard the welcome snap of the bone breaking, and saw the knife skitter away into the bushes. His scream got caught short by the brick wall as I slammed him into it, bringing the useless arm up behind his back and working the weight and momentum of his big frame against him.

  “Tell whoever sent you that Nick worked alone. I don’t have his money. I don’t have any of his nasty pictures and I sure don’t have whatever else it is you want. Tell him to leave me alone. You got that?”

  When the man didn’t answer, I jerked his arm higher. His answering cry cut through the blood pounding in my ears as adrenaline sent my overworked emergency alert system into overdrive. How much longer was this shit going to go on? When was everybody going to finally figure out that I’d been even more hoodwinked by Nick’s betrayal than the rest of them?

  In my world, Nick had been just a bad husband. Until the police had come through my front door with a search warrant and a squadron of uniformed officers, I’d only known about Nick’s day job as an accountant. So how could I possibly know anything about missing money?

  I pushed the big man tight against the wall and stretched up on tiptoe to say my piece. He moaned, the fight gone out of his huge frame, and I thanked God for Vinny and Krav Maga. A year ago, I would’ve been this moron’s prey, but now I could take care of myself. In the two years since Nick’s arrest and our separation I’d grown up. In the past year I’d gotten divorced, watched as my ex-husband got convicted and sent to prison, and learned to kill a man ten different ways. Not bad for a kindergarten teacher.

  I sighed and watched as my attacker ran away. I now understood the concept of, “use it or lose it.” I just didn’t like it. There was something wrong with having to defend myself against hairy ogres, irate husbands and loudmouthed police officers. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, I’d married Nick ten years ago, but aside from that, nothing. So why did everyone think I knew more than I did? Why did people keep coming up to me on the street, yelling about how their lives had been ruined by my husband? Hadn’t my life been ruined? How would I ever pick up the pieces?

  My heart was pounding and my hands shook as the shock and reality of my recent attack set in and overwhelmed my body. It wasn’t the first time a confrontation had turned physical, but it was the first surprise attack and by far the worst. I closed my eyes for a second, seeing it all over again in my mind’s eye. The guy had meant business. He wasn’t another irate husband, or one of Nick’s former business associates accusing Nick of embezzling money, and he was most certainly not a cop. No, this guy had been hired help. Why had he gone to the trouble of following me on vacation? Did they think I had a suitcase full of stolen money and was coming to tiny New Bern to spend it?

  People just kept turning up, out of nowhere, all saying Nick owed them money, or wanting revenge. Who were all of these people and when would it all end?

  “Sophie! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Darlene had snuck up on me and now stood on the sidewalk swatting at imaginary mosquitoes and looking annoyed.

  I stared at my sister for a moment, wondering if she noticed that I looked a little the worse for wear, and realizing that she of course didn’t. It was actually better that Darlene not know about my encounter. She’d only run straight back to our parents and tell all, and then I’d have that to deal with.

  “You were looking for me?” I sputtered. “Where were you?”

  I saw her catch her breath and get ready to start in on the defense, and short-circuited her.

  “Never mind. Would you look at this place?” I said, hoping she wouldn’t notice I was sweating bullets and slightly out of breath. I stared down at the brochure I held in my hands and started spouting off information, hoping to distract Darlene with facts. “It was built in 1886. It’s perfect.”

  Darlene’s expression changed to one of wary concern. “Perfect for what? It’s falling apart.”

  “Darlene, look. It’s got good bones. It might need updating, some paint and a new roof, but the brochure says that most of the structural renovations have been completed. It’s mainly cosmetic work now. Best of all, it’s only sixty-eight thousand.

  “Dollars?”

  I gave her a look that said her sarcasm wasn’t wasted on me. I knew what she was saying. “Darlene, it’s a steal. Do you realize what one of these would cost in Philly? In Society Hill? This is unbelievable.”

  “Unbelievable is right,” she said. “It’s probably just a shell. And you see those brick apartments back there? Those are the Projects. Sophie, this is not a good neighborhood.”

  I looked where she was pointing, almost exactly behind the house, maybe a block away. Then I turned and looked across the street in the other direction, at the little cottages that had already been renovated, sweet with flower boxes and periwinkle shutters, rich with fresh paint and gingerbread trim. Suddenly the decision was an easy one.

  “It’s a steal, Darlene.”

  “They’ll rob you blind, Sophie.”

  “I could make money on resale.”

  “You could be killed in your bed one night.”

  “I love it,” I said, but I was thinking, I’ll be killed for sure if I stay in Philly. It’s only a matter of time. Besides, what school administrator in Philadelphia would renew the contract of a kindergarten teacher who’d been married to Nick the Dick?

  “You live in Grandma’s old house,” she attempted to remind me. “You complain about it constantly.”

  “I rent the place,” I said. “Uncle Butch owns it and I bitch because he won’t fix a damn thing. And if you want to talk about crime, look at my neighborhood. How many homicides do you think South Philly has a year? Probably more in a week than New Bern has in a year. Since Nick’s been in jail I’ve been mugged twice and had the house broken into three times!”

  “Yeah, but there’s cops up there, lots of them.”

  “Darlene, there are cops everywhere.”

  “Sophie, think about it. This is a small town. You’re single. You really want to leave Philly for this?”

  I stared at her. She was in the same boat as I was and suddenly she didn’t think New Bern was such a great town? What was this all about?

  Like a mind reader, Darlene honed in on me. “Look,” she said, “I moved down here because Ma and Pa retired here. They put on the pressure, the guilt. ‘We’re old,’ they said. ‘Who will take care of us?’ So I came. Why not? I was single. But finding a man here is like winning the lottery. It just doesn’t happen.”

  Mr. Wonderful flashed across my mind but I shoved him out. “Good, I’m not looking for a man. Ma and Pa have been after me to move down here, too. Why not? What do I have to lose?”

  Maybe I could start over.

  Darlene was looking even more anxious. “You don’t have a job,” she said.

  “I teach school, Darlene. I can work anywhere. I’ve got all summer to find something, and besides, I’ve got the money Aunt Viv left me when she died. With what this place costs I could buy it and fix it up and still have a little money in the bank.”

  Darlene didn’t look convinced.

  “Look, Joey moved down with Angela and the kids. That didn’t turn out so bad, did it?”

  “That’s different,” she said, pouting.

  I got to the heart of the matter then. “Darlene, Nick’s not gonna be in prison much longer. You think I don’t know he’s carrying a grudge? You think he won’t haunt me, trying to make my life a living hell? You think I want to walk down the street every day waiting for the time I round a corner and there he is? Do you think I don�
��t see the looks on the faces of the people we know? They’re thinking, There’s Sophie, the pervert’s ex-wife. You think I don’t know this and feel it every time I walk out my front door? Darlene, the man took pictures of me naked in the shower. He videotaped us making love and sold copies on the internet for $14.95. It’s not the sort of thing you live down easily.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how they didn’t just look, they yelled, hurling insults and obscenities at me. I didn’t want her to pity me, or worse, to be afraid for me. I was Darlene’s big sister, not a victim to feel sorry for and take care of. Not me.

  But Darlene looked sad anyway, like she saw through me, like she was feeling my life and it hurt. Something inside me snapped then, and before I could stop myself, the words tumbled out.

  “Even if I wanted to meet somebody, even if I actually met a man up in Philly,” I said, “what are the chances he’s seen those pictures of me? Even if he hasn’t, what chance is there he won’t know who I am? Everybody knows what Nick did, Darlene. I see it in their eyes. I feel dirty even when I’ve just bathed. Can’t you see what I’m telling you, honey?”

  Darlene’s eyes filled with unshed tears and she nodded slowly.

  “I want something new. Something fresh, where I don’t have to feel ashamed just walking around in my own neighborhood. I don’t want to live in the subdivision with you guys. I don’t want to bust up what you’ve got going with Ma and Pa. I just want to be somewhere where people love me.”

  Darlene was crying now. She looked up at the broken-down house and back to me. “Okay,” she said, her voice soft with tears. “I get it. If this is what you want, at least have it inspected. Bring Joey and Pa over—let them check it out, too. And no matter what,” she said, straightening up and becoming her know-it-all self, “don’t pay the asking price. This dump has probably been on the market forever. Lowball ’em.”

  I threw my arms around her chunky shoulders and hugged her. “Thanks, honey. Don’t worry. It’ll work out fine, you’ll see.”

  We turned away then, walking back toward the car and jabbering away about shutters and paint colors. I was so lost in my new house trance that I almost missed it, the little prickle of awareness that made me look up and stare out ahead of us.

  Mr. Wonderful from the chapel stood in the middle of the sidewalk, the folded up card table in one strong hand and two Scouts by his other side. His smile seemed to reach out and cover me. His presence felt like an electrical current that arced from his body into mine. I had the foolish urge to run to him and say, “Hey, guess what? I’m going to buy that old house around the corner.” But of course, that would be crazy. So instead I looked away, kept on babbling to Darlene and walked right past him.

  “Okay,” she said, when we were a half a block away, “what in the hell was that?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “You know what. That guy. What was with you and that guy? How do you know him?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sophie, that look, that energy between you two. You know him.”

  “No, really, I don’t. I just bumped into him, that’s all.”

  Darlene sighed. “That was fate,” she said. “He is your destiny and you walked right past him.”

  “Like a fish needs a bicycle, Darlene,” I said.

  “Start peddling,” Darlene said. “’Cause, honey, that was some powerful karma, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t. It wasn’t. And I don’t want any complications in my life.”

  Darlene was muttering to herself. It sounded like she was saying, “We’ll see. We’ll just see about that.”

  I looked down at the brochure from the dream house and forced my attention onto the things I could control in my life. I could make this dream happen. I could turn a pile of wood and weeds into a home. But turning a smile into a relationship, now that was just plain foolish. At least the house was a sure deal. A house doesn’t vanish like a puff of smoke. A house is real. You can reach out and stroke the wood, feel the walls solid and sure. A house is what it is; it doesn’t lie. A house doesn’t write letters from prison saying you’ve ruined its life. A house doesn’t threaten to hunt you down and kill you.

  Chapter 2

  My brother, Joey, is a poet. I don’t know if Pa will ever recover from this. If Joey didn’t look and act so normal on the outside, I think Pa might’ve disowned him. As it is, Pa, the retired ironworker, just ignores the poetry part and tries to believe that Joey’s simply an English teacher, a college professor. Each year, when Joey’s newest book comes out, Ma carefully lines it up with the others on the top row of the bookshelf, and there it stays, never read by Pa and misunderstood by Ma.

  Joey, for his part, doesn’t spout off rhymes or stare into space all misty-eyed like Darlene. Joey plays rugby on Saturday afternoons. He roughhouses with his kids, is openly affectionate with his wife and can fix anything. Pa holds this out as incontrovertible evidence that Joey is somehow just passing through a phase with his writing.

  “Poetry, schmoetry,” Pa says. “He don’t mean nothing by it.”

  Ma’s kind of flattered. It appeals to the well-hidden, romantic side of her personality. “He’s writing about growing up,” she says, like this is a tribute.

  I’ve read Joey’s stuff, the stuff he doesn’t show our parents. Believe me, it is not a tribute. He talks about all the things we good Italians don’t mention, like the brutality of growing up Catholic, or the pain of living poor when the layoffs happen and the jobs don’t come.

  Joey feels everything. He cried when Angela stood holding her father’s arm in the back of the church, right before she walked down the aisle and became his wife. He sobbed when his first baby, Emily, was born and he held her in his arms. He cried when the second baby, Joseph Jr., arrived two years later and cried yet again when the third baby, Alfonse, completed the trio. He laughs hard, he plays hard and he loves his family, all of us, more than we can ever truly know. I watch Joey so I see all of this, but my parents, they miss out sometimes when they don’t allow themselves to see the real Joe.

  It was Joey who saw the dream in my old house. Joey who convinced Pa that this would be okay, that we would all pitch in and it would actually be fun, a family thing. He showed up for the inspection with Pa in the car, the two of them ready to find fault with my future acquisition. Instead, Joey wound up rubbing his hand lovingly along the old banister, kneeling down to show Pa the strength in the ancient heart pine floors, and crawling up under the rafters in the attic to feel the “bones” of my new home. It was Joey who won Pa over, and Joey who cheered me on when I had doubts.

  “Soph, look,” he said, his fingers tracing the pattern in an etched glass window, “you can’t find detail like this anymore. It’s art. Oh, kid, you have scored here. What a deal!”

  Joey didn’t let me back down on my dream, not for one minute. “You’re a Mazaratti, Soph,” he said. “Look at you—you divorced that piece of crap husband, you took your name back, you remembered where you come from and now you’ll be where you belong—with family, starting over.”

  He drove the rental truck up to Philly with me that very week, loaded my belongings and waved goodbye to the old neighborhood as we pulled up onto I-95 heading south.

  “Don’t look back,” he said. “I never have. I don’t miss it and I didn’t leave half the baggage you’re dumping. I say good riddance to bad rubbish, Soph. Step out there, make yourself a life and don’t worry about Philly ’cause Philly ain’t gonna worry about you.”

  It was also Joe who convinced Ma that the reason I didn’t move into the planned community with them and Darlene was because I had a mission to teach inner city kids and needed to be close to my future students. Now this was all bullshit, but Ma bought it on account of it was Joey doing the sales pitch.

  So it made sense then that it was Joey I called when I got into trouble—big trouble. I called him at his community college office, before I called Pa and before I could con
trol my emotions. I called him not because I didn’t know what to do and he did, I called him because he would know what to say. He would know how to put the picture back in focus without shattering the lens.

  “Joey,” I said, when he came to the phone, “you gotta get over here, quick.”

  “What’s wrong?” Joey’s voice was strong and deep and, most of all, calm.

  “I was…I was working in the backyard….” I clutched the cell phone, pressing it to my ear. I kept gulping, swallowing, standing there in the weeds, staring at the ground and trying not to lose control. “You know, hacking at those vines so I could get to the trash pile and haul it out to the bin.”

  “Yeah?” Joey didn’t get impatient like Pa would’ve done; he let me tell the story in my own time and manner.

  “I hit something, Joe, with the machete, and when I did…” I swallowed very hard, looked at the long, thin blade stuck where it had landed, and tried to continue. “It, like, sank into something—you know, something soft?”

  “Sophie,” Joe said, “tell me about it.”

  “Joey, there’s someone dead in my backyard. I was just chopping weeds and I hit her. Joey, I think I might’ve killed somebody.”

  I heard him exhale. “I’m coming,” he said, and hung up.

  I stood there as if the gravity of the universe was pinning me to the planet, and stared at the body in front of me. If I’d really thought about it, I would’ve realized that she was probably dead before I hit her. How else could she have come to my backyard, rolled up in dark green plastic and positioned herself beneath bushes and weeds, waiting for my impending discovery? Who alive or conscious would wait for death like that?

  Besides, there was no blood when I hit her. I mean, I knew, instantly, that I’d hit something that was flesh and blood. I shuddered because I could still feel the initial hit and then the sinking in of the blade. I’d knelt down, tugged at the plastic and fell backward as it gave in my hand, revealing the slim arm of a woman, the side of her body exposed to the bright morning sunlight.