by Carol Anshaw
“Sometimes machine burgers can be pretty good.” She pulls a wad of crumpled bills from her jacket pocket, tries to smooth them flat, then hands them over. “Also, we should probably try a Lucky Lady. I’ll meet you down there after I talk with your mom.” She stops as something occurs to her. “How’d you get here?”
“Mrs. Pappageorge. I went over to her house when I came home and saw the kitchen and couldn’t find Mom—” Cate hates that he saw the kitchen. Also hates that Mrs. Pappageorge, Neale’s next-door neighbor, was his designated driver. She is well into her nineties. She drives a huge, ancient sedan, sits on a phone book to peer over the steering wheel, has wood blocks glued to the accelerator and brake pedals. She wears thick black plastic wraparound elder shades. A few months ago, Cate saw her run a red on Ashland, totally blow it and keep right on going.
“They’re going to have to pry her license from her cold, dead hands.”
“Yeah. It’s like being on a ride. You know, like at Great America.”
* * *
When he’s gone, Cate bends down to Neale and kisses her softly on the mouth, something she has never done before, but anything else seems too little to convey the amount of emotion she’s holding about life and death and love and friendship. Neale’s eyes open a little. She nods slightly, toward Cate’s bloody clothes. “Nice hoodie.”
Cate takes her free hand, the one without the IV needle punched into the back of it. Neale sees Cate’s bandaged palm. She looks at Cate.
“Yeah, I cut it up a bit with the extinguisher handle.” She pulls three pill bottles from her pocket. “He might’ve been a junkie, so I have to take these until his HIV test comes back. Apparently they’re horrible. You get gas and the runs for days. They promised the lab results will come back fast, though, and hopefully he won’t be infected, and then I can stop taking them.”
She sees she is talking to someone who has fallen asleep. But when Cate moves to get up, Neale says, “Hey, you know. Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
Neale lifts her head as far as she can to say something in a low voice. Cate puts her ear to Neale’s mouth.
“He didn’t get in. I’m telling you so you don’t have to wonder. There was a problem. He was too big.”
“Yeah. I saw it. Well, thank God for that, I guess.”
Neale says, “So much smell.”
“I know. It was like a zoo. They were like hyenas. I couldn’t bash him hard enough. And then I couldn’t stop.”
“The woman—?”
“She kicked you in the side of the head, maybe you don’t remember. Anyway, that’s the first thing I saw and I didn’t care for that. From there I can only remember pieces. I don’t think I was scared at all while everything was happening. I was in too much of a rage.”
“Joe.” She’s tired now, drifting off.
“We’re going to my place for tonight. For as long as you’re in here.”
“Tell him what you can. Maybe a G-rated version. You know him. What he can stand to hear.”
“Hey. You know. Here’s the big thing. We’re alive. We’re going to be okay.” What Cate doesn’t mention is the strong breeze rushing through her, pushing her a little aloft. This is about knowing that what just happened will bring the two of them so much closer.
* * *
On her way down the stairs, she thinks, Maureen. Shit. Cate was supposed to get together with her after yoga. Yoga seems so long ago, a country from which her ancestors emigrated, someplace on a folded and refolded map. As she calls, she imagines Maureen’s phone dark and silent on the nightstand, Maureen glaring at it. When she answers, Maureen sounds alert as a sentry. Cate abbreviates, condenses, although that’s not easy, given how much has happened.
“I’ll be right over.”
“What I need more is for you to go over to Neale’s.” She gives Maureen the address. “My car is out back. The extra key fob is inside the armrest. I know, I know that’s stupid.” Then, “Can you drive it over here?”
* * *
In the corner of the dead cafeteria, Joe says, “I heard you killed the guy.”
“I tried to kill him. I don’t think he’s dead yet. I didn’t have a very good weapon. I grabbed the fire extinguisher on the way in. I don’t remember everything that happened. Big chunks seem to be missing.”
“Yeah, I saw the floor.” He’s eating his third microwaved machine cheeseburger. Cate gets one for herself, and a Coke. The two of them are alone in a room that has a desperate level of cheer to it. The murals are an underwater world of colorful cartoon fish.
“Let’s get going, what do you say? Come home with me. Maureen’s picking us up. Graham will be at the apartment. And Sailor. I think if I put you on the sofa, he’ll sleep with you. I know there’s a lot to think about, but tonight we all need to get some sleep. We’ll deal with everything else tomorrow.”
She’s a little surprised when he says, “Okay.”
* * *
Downstairs, in the teal hospital lobby (walls, chairs, carpet, even a tealish air-freshener) next to a giant statue of a saint who appears to have hammered things, Maureen is waiting. She pulls Cate into a crushing hug, then reaches to put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. She doesn’t bother to say anything. What, really, could she say?
Cate is so happy to see her. Maureen has apparently gone through some efficient progression of steps, probably taking a Lyft to Neale’s; rescuing the car; bringing it here. Cate is so happy and then she’s crying. Maureen looks so fresh. Nothing bad has happened to her today. From the car, she calls ahead, and so Graham is waiting for them when they get there. Also, Sailor. As usual, he’s standing right in front of the door. So to get in, Cate has to push his nose with it, softly. Graham is dressed for company. Jeans and a white shirt. Socks.
“I have some wine open. And pop in the fridge. If anybody’s hungry, I’m cooking a snack in the oven.” Cate smells lobster and sherry, which means there’s an ovenful of Dean & DeLuca soufflés. Something nobody wants at three in the morning.
“We had burgers,” Cate says.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Joe says, patting his stomach. Maureen and Cate pat theirs.
“We’ll definitely have a glass of wine, though,” Cate says. “Even Joe. Half a glass. We’ll pretend we’re a French family.”
“Well,” Graham says, sounding so agitated he’s kind of scary, “you’re all safe and sound now. That’s the important thing.”
* * *
They make camp. Sailor gets a walk with Graham and Joe. Then Joe gets a sweatshirt, a comforter, a couch, and a dog across his feet.
“I’m trying not to move,” he tells Cate. “So he’ll stay.”
It occurs to her that everybody tries to keep a sleeping dog in bed with them. Like it’s an honor.
* * *
In the bathroom she hands off her bloody clothes to Maureen.
“Just so you know, these are going in the trash. Even if we washed them on some super After-Killing PermaPress cycle, you’d never wear them again.” She takes the hospital bandages off Cate’s hands, then gently pushes her into the shower, then gets in with her. Afterward, she recleans and rebandages the scrapes on Cate’s palms. When they are finally in bed, she pulls Cate into a full-body embrace. “Wonder Woman.”
Embarrassed, Cate says, “Everything about me is sore.”
Then Maureen says, “Do you want an Ambien? I have some with me. Xanax, too.” Maureen is definitely who you’d want to help relax you through Armageddon. Her bag is filled with necessities for almost any bad situation.
“Maybe. I’m so tired I thought I could sleep standing up, but now that I’m horizontal, I can see I’m probably going to jitter through the night. I can’t stop my mind. I never in my life thought about killing anybody.”
Maureen is out of bed, tapping a small festival of pills out of an amber prescription bottle, into her palm. “Here.” She plucks out a skinny pink tablet. “Take this. I’m sorry for what you had to go through today. But you saved
your friend. As a bonus, you put a piece of human garbage into the dumpster.”
Cate takes the pill, washes it down with the glass of water Maureen has put on the nightstand. And she thinks, I guess. Then backs up a little. Maureen’s judgment seems too summary, made from a position already held. Although she supposes you could say the guy was human garbage, Cate wouldn’t frame it that way. She doesn’t have a frame on him big enough to make any sweeping assessments. She hates what he did to Neale, and she hates what she had to do to stop him. She hasn’t had time to assess him and his place in the universe. All she can do just now is close her eyes and roll away before Maureen says something else, something that might make Cate like her a little less.
Half an hour later, Cate is still awake. Even as she gets groggy, her mind is too busy trying to herd thoughts into some corral. She has a vague ringing in her ears, not really a ringing so much as an extremely tiny voice of Linda Ronstadt singing “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.” She’s surprised she remembers the words so well.
She rolls over. Maureen’s not asleep either; rather, she’s on her side, watching a YouTube clip on her phone. Linda Ronstadt.
“When she could still sing, before the Parkinson’s, she could really sing. Nothing will ever take that away from her. Does the music bother you?”
“No. It’s okay. I think the pill is kicking in.” This is a total lie. There isn’t a pill that could subdue her heart; she can feel it as a muscle, even now pumping blood through her at a level necessary to heroics.
* * *
The next morning, in spite of being in an apartment overstuffed with an ex-husband, a boy, a dog, and a girlfriend, Cate wakes shivering and sore everywhere, also massively alone. She understands she has arrived on another side of everything. No one is over here with her.
crosswinds
Everyone, of course, weighs in on the matter. When Cate calls her father, he and Seneca put their phone on speaker and listen together and almost simultaneously insist she come down to Puebla for a break. She can’t now, she tells them, and they ask if she needs them to come up there for a while, stay with her. This brings her to tears, ducts fill and empty. An unusual occurrence for her. But she’s okay, she assures them.
Her father offers to call Ricky with the news, which pleases Cate to no end—Ricky having to find out secondhand. When she calls an hour later, Cate lies to her, on principle. “I was just about to call.”
At first Ricky seems properly empathic, but then she quickly segues into fatuously confusing the fire extinguisher with a Crock-Pot. The perpetrators she categorizes as hoboes. Assembling a version that’s slightly cartoonish.
“Well, I didn’t get a choice, really,” Cate says. “I didn’t get to pick light saber and Armani underwear model for my weapon and victim.” She’s pretty much done with the conversation at this point. Her most immediate preoccupation is how sick to her stomach she is from the antiretroviral meds, another crummy aspect of the whole thing she doesn’t want to present to her mother.
“How’s Neale?”
“Banged up. Her cheekbone is fractured. She’s going to have to have surgery. Her wrist is sprained. I’m not sure exactly how that happened.”
“Did he—?”
Ricky’s slightly gossipy inflection further softens with a velvety tone of concern that makes Cate decide she doesn’t have to answer this essential question.
“And of course the whole thing will now be distorted into heartwarming. Like you’re the crossing guard who saved some kid from a hurtling truck. And now you’re taking him to Disneyland because that’s always been his secret wish.”
Cate waits, hoping Ricky will dial this down a little, but she doesn’t.
“And it’s a shame they brought your hand into the story. Here. Wait a minute.” Cate sits through the giant crackle of a newspaper opening and folding. “ ‘In spite of her disability—’ ”
Cate presses the red hang-up icon. Later, she’ll say the call got dropped and she really should change networks.
* * *
A few days later, after the nameless guy has died and Cate is officially a killer, another local TV station asks if she’d be up to doing a news feature on home invasion, “a sort of DIY piece,” what someone can improvise when their home is invaded. This is put to Cate with a feminist cast, and she’s persuaded her story might be of help to other women. How it turns out, though, is her sitting on one of two low sofas, around a coffee table, with two morning show hosts and another guest, a guy who sets a bear trap by his back door every night before he goes to bed and how this paid off big-time when a couple of robbers jimmied the door open one night. He sits with the bear trap in his lap throughout the segment.
“That’s it,” she tells Neale. “I’m getting off the parade float. If other people want to murder their intruders, they can find their own crappy weapons.”
* * *
Graham comes at the event from a completely different angle. She comes in to find him at the kitchen counter, fiddling with a small piece of electronic equipment. She doesn’t bother asking what he’s tinkering with; she’s too tired. His paranoia now seems ephemeral and elective. Like her own worries before. Before.
“The lab called. They said you can stop taking the meds.”
“Great! That means he tested negative. If HIV is the worst thing in the world, the pills are the second worst. I won’t go into detail.”
“Can I get something for you? Espresso?” A new, Italian machine has found its way onto the counter. Nice, but she hopes not a sign of him settling in.
“What’s toasting?”
“Cranberry crumpets. You can get them from this place in London. Frick and Frack. You know. Crumpeters to the Queen. Something like that.” Since he’s been living here, Graham has become expert at ordering expensive everything from everywhere.
“You know, when T. E. Lawrence was eight years old, he became convinced his destiny was to save a captive people. That seems unbelievable, but I do think some people have a clearer path than the rest of us. Along those lines, I think what you did was inevitable, a moment all your previous fine moments were paving the way to. You were there for a reason. Because you could take care of it.”
“Graham. I mean thanks, but I don’t think anything about it was foreordained.”
“Remember when we were first married? That heat-wave summer the temperatures were in the hundreds. The power was out? And you were bringing bags of ice up to old people in high-rises?”
“Are you kidding? Everybody was doing that. And truthfully, that’s one of the things in my life I feel worst about. I only got up fifteen floors. I’ve always worried somebody on sixteen died of heatstroke.”
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it. The penitent path. Go sprinkle sand in your sheets, put pebbles in your shoes. You’re still my hero.”
“So, I’m not sure I want to ask, but are you still seeing Eleanor?”
“She’s been in Fort Lauderdale doing that new Doll’s House. So we just Skype.”
“Often?” She’s hoping for once a week.
“Just at night.”
Not a good answer.
“Do you want me to put some guava jam on your crumpet?” he says, changing the subject. “It goes great. With the cranberries in the crumpets. There’s this guava orchard in Honduras. You can only get it in certain months. And only one jar per year.”
night shift
Quarter to three in the morning. She’s pulling in Spotify on her cell phone, playing all the Lorde they have. She is at her drawing board. Before she took over the lease, this workshop belonged to a cabinetmaker. He left behind a huge, work-worn table he probably made here, with no thought to ever getting it out through the door. The thick legs are inset deep into the top, further stuck with adhesive and bolts. She added a tilting top for drawing.
Waiting for the heat to kick on, she shrugs into a stray sweater, a shape-shifted maroon cardigan once worn by the evil Cathy Ames in a teen-outreach production of E
ast of Eden. Its current shape is that of a large rag. A tide of designs and models—her own and those of students, also props she hangs on to because the next play won’t have them and she doesn’t want to have to go looking again, the stray piece of some costume—all wash up in this workshop and have to continuously be beaten back, like sand from a desert hut.
She is trying to use work to confine her mind. But her mind is not interested in confinement, not at all. Rather, it wants to leap around madly, go forward, then circle back again to the scene of the crime, to see what more it can pull loose. She pushes aside the small set she is working on, pulls over a notebook with an articulated drawing of Neale’s kitchen, showing where the players were. Laying a grid on chaos.
She is caught between two immovable and large pieces of her life: what happened in Neale’s kitchen and what’s happening in New York. Her worst event and her biggest break. In a reasonable life, these wouldn’t be juxtapositioned. She should be able to have a minute to take a deep breath. In her recent past there have been months-long stretches of underemployment when she could have easily fit in killing someone, then curling into some PTSD fetal position for a while afterward. After the Vita play, she has two shows on her schedule—one in April for Handlebars in Milwaukee, one in Chicago in July when school is out. A reasonable schedule.
(The heat has come on. Wet meets dry, and the memory of carpentry releases a sigh of wood and glue.)
It’s the New York play that’s putting a thumb on the scale. Now is a time she really shouldn’t be away. She called Molly Cracciolo to let her know what had happened and how she needed another week or so at home, to find her footing. And at first, Molly was notionally sympathetic. She returned Cate’s call right away. Then how terrible, she told Cate, she and Lauren had their own experience along these lines, a recent robbery at their summer house in the Hamptons. Their entire collection of nineteenth-century French dolls, precious things, so articulated. Tiny necklaces of real diamonds and lapis lazuli. Lauren cried off and on the whole night they found out.