by Samuel Ligon
There’s a hammer on the counter.
“You never loved me!” he screams.
Maybe killing her.
I poke my head around the entryway, and he’s pushing her out of the bathroom toward me, holding her by her hair in his fist. The big hole Stan told me about if I shoot him once he walks past me, the bullet going into her.
I pull my head in fast, waiting for them coming toward me.
The noise and the feeling of them through the floor. Her stumbling and asking about Alina and him saying she’s already dead as he pushes her past me.
Already dead!
He’s got her hair in his fist as he walks past.
Nikki starts wailing.
But if I shoot him now I might kill them both, the bullet going through him and into her. Or he might get a shot off into her back.
“My own fucking blood!” he screams, as she thrashes against him.
He wraps her in his arms, his gun pointed at the wall.
I pick up the hammer and bring it down at the base of his skull, Nikki thrashing and wailing.
He crumples. Nikki whirls, blood-covered, grabbing my arm, going for the gun. My arm part of the gun. I drop the hammer.
Burke writhes on the floor holding his head.
Nikki thrashing in my grip, screaming, “Kill him! Kill him!”
I try to keep my eyes on him as I hold her thrashing, try to keep her from killing him. Because I’ve got him.
I see his gun by the back door as she thrashes against me and he writhes on the floor, screaming. “You fucking fuck!”
Nikki like an animal, twisting out of my hold.
No reason to kill him now, except I want to.
“What do you want?” he says bringing himself to his knees.
But it would be better to let the cops have him.
“Who are you?” he screams.
Even though they’ll fuck everything up.
“Don’t move,” I tell him, holding the gun in front of me.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” he says.
Nikki lifts a chair in the air as if she’s going to smash him with it.
But I can’t have her so close to him, can’t have her take his bullet.
She brings the chair down hard on top of him.
I move quick and push her toward the back door.
“Get out of the way!” I shout.
Blood running down his face now too.
This crazy high pitched screaming from Nikki. This keening.
Him not knowing where to look, at me or at Nikki.
“Don’t fucking move!” I scream over Nikki’s sounds.
Then she’s right above him with his gun in her hand.
“No, Nikki! I say.
But she’s got him by the hair, standing behind him.
“No,” I say.
He turns to her. Looks up at her.
Grabs her wrist holding his hair.
I shoot him in the chest and he collapses.
Nikki still holding his head by his hair.
With her other hand, she puts the gun against the side of his face and fires.
He jerks down to the floor, a hole in his head.
A hole in his chest.
She stands over him.
“Don’t,” I say.
She bends over him and fires into the side of his face. Four more times.
Smoke in the kitchen. This stink. Nikki still wailing, keening.
Sounds I’ve never heard a human make.
I drop the gun on the table and grab her.
She gets off one more shot into his body, keeps pulling the trigger, thrashing in my hold, the sound of clicks on empty chambers under her animal noise, the stink and smoke all around us as she thrashes. I wrap her in both my arms and pull her into me. As hard as I can, hurting her, trying to push her back into herself. Burke running all over the floor.
Another sound. Another screaming.
She must hear it too, because she goes softer in my arms.
Her head perking toward the sound.
She goes silent.
And it’s just the other sound.
Alina in the living room at the entrance to the kitchen wailing.
33
Alina
“Alina,” my mother says, and he lets her go.
“Alina!” my mother screams. If it is my mother. This monster. This bloody animal. “Oh, my God. Alina.” Stumbling over him toward me. “Baby, baby, baby.”
Coming at me naked and bloody.
“Don’t look, baby. It’s not what you think.”
I saw her kill him.
He told me to wait at the diner, where he left me.
I saw her kill him!
But I couldn’t wait anymore.
“Look at me, Alina,” she says, practically tackling me in the living room as I run. “Oh, baby.” Pulling me against her bloody body.
I try to twist out of her hold.
My father!
The words echoing in my dull ears after the explosions and the roaring ringing that won’t go away.
“Look at me,” she says, turning me into her and holding me away.
“He did this to me,” she says, her words jumbled.
Her teeth broken out of her bloody face.
“He’s not your father,” she says. “He did this to me.”
I can’t look at her.
“Alina.”
But I won’t look.
“Alina!”
My legs running, but her holding me.
“He was going to hurt you,” she says. “Look at me, baby. It’s okay, now. He’s not your father. Everything he told you—”
“We have to get out of here,” the other one says. Radiant and shiny.
“There might be somebody else,” he says, “out there waiting.”
“Baby,” she says, running her hands over my hair as I twist away.
I throw up all over her as she holds me twisting.
The man appears with her robe from upstairs. A brown bag in his other hand.
Sounds come from me. This shrieking in her face.
“We’re going to get you somewhere safe,” the man says. “We need to move now.”
“Baby,” she says, pulling me against her broken body. “I thought you were dead.”
Like I thought my father was dead. Back before he wasn’t dead.
Back before she didn’t kill him.
“He’s not your father,” she says.
Smearing me with her blood and his blood as I wriggle away.
The man surrounding us with himself, squeezing.
“Stop,” he says. “Shh,” he says.
“My ribs,” she says.
“Alina,” the man says, still holding me as he lowers her to the floor.
He lifts me in the air and my legs keep running.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Alina. It’s okay.”
I look at my mother dead on the floor.
My father dead in the kitchen.
He tried to kill her. And then she killed him.
I call her name as loud as I can. I call her name.
“She’s going to be okay,” the man says. “She’s going to—Shh. We’re going to get her somewhere safe. We’re going to get you somewhere safe. Shh. It’s okay now, Alina. You’re going to help me help your mother. We’re going to help her now.”
Squeezing the breath out of me as I call her name.
He sets me beside her. “I want to make sure she’s okay. I want to show you.”
Her not moving all bloody on the floor.
“Mom?” I say.
And I think no and I think no and I think no.
“Heart’s beating strong,
” he says, taking my hand and pushing it against the sticky pulse in her neck. “See? We need to get out of here now. In case—”
“Mom?”
Her eyelids fluttering until she sees me.
She smiles and dies again.
“I’m going to pull the car up front,” the man says. “We have to go.”
“Mom?”
She wakes again and looks at me.
“It’s okay,” she says. But her face twists under her mask as she tries to lift herself.
“Just lay still,” I say. “Just—”
A hand on my back scares me out of my skin and I shriek.
“It’s okay, Alina” the man says.
“It’s not okay,” I say.
“We just have to get through these next few minutes,” he says.
He crouches next to her, lifts her from the floor.
I follow him out the door, closing it behind me.
Mrs. Hansen watches from her porch across the street talking into her phone, one hand saluted on her forehead against the setting sun.
The man waves me to the open back car door.
“Sit with her head in your lap,” he says.
I scoot in as he lifts her head and lays it on my lap.
“Mom?” I say. I can hear her breath bubbling as he pulls away from the curb.
“I think she’s dying,” I say, because of that bubbling choking noise.
“Lift her head so she can breathe,” the man says.
I try not to hurt her as I lift her head higher and she coughs.
“Mom?” I say.
The man hands me a wet towel over the front seat as we cross the bridge.
I try to touch her face with it, to clean up the blood.
“I thought you were dead,” she says, looking up at me.
“Alina,” she says. “Alina.”
“If that wasn’t my father. . . .”
“His brother,” she says. “Burke.”
She grimaces as I smear blood on her face.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she says, but her words are smashed. “I’m just so happy.”
“But Mom? But Mom?”
She opens her eyes.
“Where are we going?”
“The cops,” the man says, and my mother says, “No!” and the man says, “I really think,” and my mom says, “Later!”
“The hospital then,” the man says.
“But not the cops, Mark. Not yet. Not the hospital, either. I’m not ready.”
“Listen,” he says, and my mother says, “Not like this. No! I have to get cleaned up. I’m not going like this.”
The man doesn’t say anything. “Promise me,” she says, and he still doesn’t say anything, and she says, “Promise me, Mark,” and he says, “Okay. Shh.”
And then she’s asleep, the towel against her face under my hand under her hands.
“Mom?”
She opens her eyes and closes them.
“Mom?”
She opens her eyes and closes them.
“Where are we going?”
“I know a place we can rest,” Mark says, “that’s safe.”
“But what about the hospital,” I say. “That’s where we need to go.”
“I know” Mark says. “And we will. Soon.”
“But what if she’s dying.”
“I’m not dying,” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to say this if I was.”
“But what if you are?”
“Shh,” she says, looking into my face. Falling asleep, then saying my name.
“Stay awake,” I tell her. “I think it’s bad if you go to sleep.”
“Alina,” she says, looking up at me. “I’m resting.”
I hold her.
“Lina,” she says. “My beauty.”
The man drives us past the airport, planes rising and falling, and toward the city into the sun going down.
34
Mark
I need to get her to the hospital and we need to talk to the cops, but I’m not even sure what to tell the cops. I don’t know anything, but I feel okay for the moment. I mention the hospital again as we walk up the stairs to Cynthia’s apartment, and Nikki says she has to get cleaned up first, that she won’t go anywhere looking like this. I don’t know if the emergency room will be legally compelled to notify the cops. Nikki has her arm around Alina, glowing through the mess Burke made of her. She seems to be feeling better since her rest in the car. I grab Cynthia’s camera from her bedroom closet and tell Nikki I have to take some pictures of her if we aren’t going to the cops right away.
“It would be better if we went now,” I tell her. “We need to show them what he did to you,” but she shakes her head.
I know we need to tell them something and soon, even if we don’t turn ourselves in right away. And time will help me get us help with our approach. But every second of silence smears us with guilt. If only she hadn’t shot him. It would be so much better if there was only the one shot, my shot, if it had only been me that killed him. Then they could just disappear into the world somewhere. Even if it was just one shot from her. But unloading the gun like she did, I just don’t know how that will play, and everything buried back in Texas that will have to come out, these dead brothers, even if they deserved it and none of it was her fault. But it should have been only me that shot him, like I wanted it to be.
I get her some Vicodins from Cynthia’s medicine cabinet.
Nikki stands in Cynthia’s bikini in Cynthia’s living room, euphoric, while I take pictures of her beat up body and face. Her ribs where he kicked her are bruised bad and bloody.
“He was sick,” she tells Alina, who’s slouched into Cynthia’s couch.
The cat people upstairs drag a pallet of concrete across their floor.
“It seemed so true,” Alina says. “He had pictures of him and you.”
“But that would have been Cash,” Nikki says. “Not Burke.”
“Cash,” Alina says. “My father.”
“Yes.”
“Did you love him?”
“I was very young.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. And I always loved you.”
I feel like I should leave them alone, but calling attention to myself with movement seems like an interruption.
“He said you wanted an abortion, that he talked you out of it.”
“That’s not true, Alina. And that wasn’t even him. Remember? I never even met Burke. He was in prison then.”
“He said he talked you out of it.”
I try to make myself invisible.
“But that wasn’t your father. And I never had that thought. Not even once. I always wanted you.”
I’m so tired now and don’t know what to do exactly, wishing I could just get them out of here and away somewhere safe forever.
She sits with Alina on Cynthia’s couch, petting her, both of them covered with dried, cracking blood. Everything quiet a minute. Then Nikki says, “Let’s take a bath,” rising from the couch and holding a hand out to Alina.
I run the water for them, get them towels.
I check my voicemail while they’re in the tub together, three calls from Liz, all too late. But it would have been too late no matter when she called. I never would have gotten that money in time. And the money wouldn’t have mattered. If only she hadn’t shot him—but maybe I can say I did it. Alina though. Piling lies on her to carry the rest of her life. I call Liz and tell her I need the best lawyer in New York, a politically connected criminal defense attorney. I tell her everything.
“So you killed him?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“But you shot him. First.”
“Yes.”
“Let me go through the New York House delegation and figure out who to approach.”
I tell her I need two attorneys with deep Nassau County political connections, one for me and one for Nikki, and that we’ll need to get Newsday involved somehow.
She says she gets it. She says she knows.
“And I’ll take care of the business with Kara,” I tell her. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“We’re not talking about that now,” she says. “We’re not even thinking about it.”
She tells me she’ll figure out the lawyers we’ll need in New York and Texas, and that she’ll study the political machines to figure out where the grease will need to be applied. She’ll take care of everything that needs to be taken care of out in the world, while I take care of Nikki and Alina.
That’s all I have to do right now.
“Think you can handle that?” she asks me. “While I do this other stuff?”
I think I can handle it, I tell her. I hope I can handle it, I tell her.
“You can handle it,” she tells me. “I know you can.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say, because I’ve never felt such gratitude in my life. Not for the lawyers, or how she’ll gear up the apparatus—I’ll be paying for all of that in a variety of ways—but just that there’s someone working for us, someone I can trust who can actually help us, who knows what I’m supposed to do, too.
“You’ve never known how to thank anybody,” Liz says. “Just do your job and I’ll do mine,” and I say, “Thank you, Liz,” but she’s already gone, already working her phone, probably, buying us breathing space for the next few hours and days as she organizes the people who will become our advocates. And whatever I have to pay for that, I will gladly pay.
Nikki
Alina sits between us in the front seat as we drive to the hospital. I promised her in the tub I’d go to the cops, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep that promise. I want to keep it, but the cops have never done a thing for me and I’ve done all right without them. If I do go, Mark and I will have to figure out where to put her. I know they’re going to lock me up, but if there’s somewhere safe to put her, and if that’s what she wants—
“Just drop me out front,” I tell Mark, as we approach the hospital. “You can pick me up after, if you don’t mind.”