*
Coming down, as the music died and the staff began to clear away the party, a shout came from the terrace. We were walking together, my hand in Mike’s, and I was feeling ten foot tall and as light as a cloud.
Dylan was shouting from the swimming pool.
“Help! Help!”
Oh God!
We ran, our shoes slapping on the paving stones.
“She fell, man, she fell!” Dylan was repeating, over and over again.
We ran to the edge of the parapet, where the swimming pool overhung the garden.
“What happened?” asked Mike.
“It’s Bree!” Dylan said. “She was sitting here, all lonesome. I went to find her wrap so that I could take her home, and as I was crossing back I saw her tumble.”
We looked over the railing, into the darkness, but could see nothing.
Chapter 12
My heels sunk into the lawn. The others rushed ahead whilst I stopped to take off the stilettos. Directly beneath the parapet a crushed area of grass revealed where Brianna had fallen. Flashlight beams scoured the garden. She was nowhere to be seen.
By the time I caught up with the rescue party, they had decided that Brianna had headed to the road. The tumble from the balcony had been the final humiliation, and it was clear that she had set off to walk home.
“Mike!” I shouted as the others swept in pursuit around the side of the mansion.
The damp from the lawn soaked my feet, but taking off my shoes connected me to the ground. I could sense where Brianna had landed – a heavy blow that knocked the air from her. Mike ran back to join me as I looked up at the parapet.
“What is it?” he asked.
Most of the kids were unaware of the drama playing out below. Shouts and laughter echoed from the patio.
Brianna had felt so alone.
“She didn’t go to the road,” I said.
Mike looked for Dylan and the rescue team, but they had already disappeared.
“Where is she, then?” he asked impatiently.
“Play your flashlight here,” I asked.
“But the others need our help, Scout. We gotta join them.”
“They’ve gone in the wrong direction.”
There must have been some note of command in my voice, because Mike – against his better judgement – brought his flashlight beam around to the lawn at our feet.
“She landed here,” I said, pointing out a bowl-like indentation in the ground.
“It’s all messed up,” he said. “How can you tell?”
I stripped off my hose and wadded them into the toes of my silver shoes. If Mike thought I was crazy, he was good at hiding it.
“She landed here,” I repeated, letting my bare toes play on the damp grass. “Then she rolled to her feet. She was ashamed. She suddenly saw herself as others saw her - drunk, vengeful and bitter. And so she ran.”
“To the road?”
“No. That didn’t occur to her.”
I had him play the beam across the turf. I could see the blades bent by her passing.
“She ran across the lawn.”
“But that leads nowhere,” he said.
“That’s not true, is it?” I said, pointing up to the horizon.
A wall separated the estate from the wasteland beyond. A couple of miles away, the lights of Main Street twinkled in the shifting air.
“To a drunken girl, this was the most direct route.”
*
An avalanche of sand raced ahead as we skidded down an embankment. The lights of the town hung above the old rail yard like a mirage.
“What is it you see?” asked Mike as he scrambled to catch up. His exasperation was tinged with curiosity.
“Her determination,” I replied.
“But what? How?” he asked.
I played the flashlight beam against a raised mound. Once this ground had shaken with the passing of freight trains a mile long. Now there was only the sigh of the midnight wind. It was getting cold in that cocktail dress.
“There!” I shouted.
A small scar in the sandbank.
“You see?” I explained. “Straight as a die, she’s making for the WXRK-TV tower.” That was a grand name for the tallest structure in town, a scaffold which held the aerials for the local radio and TV station. Red lights blinked in warning from the summit.
“I can see the mark,” he said. “But how do you know that it was her who made it?”
I ran up to the scar and put my hand in the crevice.
“She used this as a handhold,” I said. There was a skid mark where her foot had landed, into which I now fitted my own toes.
“She used this,” I explained. “And pulled herself up.”
“She was barefoot?” he asked, knowing that Brianna would never be parted from her precious shoes. He climbed after me to find what my flashlight had discovered.
A pair of golden shoes, the heels snapped off.
“Her Manolos!” he exclaimed.
Brianna had thrown down the broken shoes in a fury.
“Brianna!” he shouted into the darkness.
We stood on the bank and called for her. Our voices disappeared into the wind.
The rail yard gave way to what had once been a grain depot. All that remained were the circular holes in which the silos had sat. It was like peering across the surface of a Swiss cheese. Naturally, it was called The Pits.
Of Brianna there was no sign.
Mike phoned Dylan, urging him to bring a search party our way.
“She’s in The Pits,” he said. “Don’t ask me how I know, but she’s here.”
I scurried down from the bank, my eyes trained on the ground. After the rise and fall of the rail yard, the old grain depot was deceptively level. Without a flashlight, it was impossible to see the yawning voids until your foot hit thin air.
Brianna had done pretty well.
She had skirted three vast holes. But every so often she had looked up to take her bearings from the TV tower. It was then that she had stumbled over the lip of a hole smaller than the others. There was no trace of her scream as she fell into the black.
I swung the beam down.
The pit wasn’t deep – about the depth of a grave. That’s enough to break your neck, unless you’ve drunk half a bottle of vodka. Brianna had bounced. Unable to lift herself, she had curled up and fallen asleep.
“Brianna!” I called.
The girl moaned as she stirred from her slumber. I guess the hangover was hitting a little early.
“Brianna!” I called again.
She rolled on her back, and her eyes focussed on my face.
“You!” she spat. The fall had knocked none of the spite out of her.
“Did you push me?” she asked.
“You fell, Brianna. We’re here to help.”
“You pushed me!” she shouted, scrambling to one corner on the palms of her hands like a crab. “Get away from me, bitch!”
Mike joined me at the lip of the well and peered down.
“You hurt, Bree?” he asked.
“Course I’m goddamn hurt!” she shouted back. “She pushed me!”
“No, no, she didn’t push you. She’s been with me the whole time.”
“So you both planned it?”
There was no reasoning with her, so Mike handed me his phone whilst he took the flashlight.
“Dylan’s on the line,” he explained. “You talk him in.”
He swung the beam across the curve of the well and found handholds that maintenance workers had once used to clean the sump of a vanished machine.
I wanted to watch him descend, fearful that he might fall, but in the distance I could see Dylan’s truck bouncing on the potholes of what had once been the freight road.
In the pitch black he would never find us, so I worked like air traffic control, guiding him on the phone and waving my arms like one of those airport guys with the big paddles.
“Holy shit,” said Dylan, as he stepped down. A clutch of soccer buddies fell out of the cab after him and spread around the hole.
“She down there?” asked Dylan. Before I could reply, a ‘whoop’ went up from the guys.
Mike climbed the handholds with Brianna slung over his shoulder, fireman style. Dylan and the other guys lifted the pair the final few rungs, setting Brianna safely on the ground, and clapped Mike on the back like he had scored a goal. They ‘whooped’ again, only louder. I was to learn that this is the soccer team’s standard response to everything.
Brianna staggered to her feet.
“She pushed me,” she said.
“That’s whack,” said Dylan, steering her towards the truck.
“How did they find me?”
“Don’t matter,” asked Dylan. “You’re safe now.”
“Think about it!” insisted Brianna. “How did they find me – amongst all this shit?”
Dylan paused. It struck him as odd that the search party had headed for the road, whilst the pair of us had, unerringly, followed Brianna into the wasteland.
He turned to look at Mike and me, his mind clouded with curiosity.
“It’s a damn good thing, isn’t it, Bree?” he said, dismissing the thought. “Otherwise you’d be spending the night down a hole.”
“Bullshit,” muttered Brianna.
The issue was over, because right then the vodka decided to have its revenge. Brianna doubled over and puked onto the dry ground.
*
We huddled in the back of the flatbed as the truck bounced along the fractured road. Mike held me close, keeping me warm against the biting wind.
“Now I know how you helped Mom,” he whispered. “It was you who found the Franklin girl, wasn’t it?”
Chapter 13
Red and blue lights swirled into the night sky. Young children had long since been called home from trick-or-treating, but teenagers were drawn like moths to the emergency lights.
We passed through a coven of vampires and zombies, and at least one survivor of a chainsaw massacre, to find a stockade of patrol cars outside my house.
Cops were bundling Moyheddin and Riley down the path towards their cruisers.
“Hey – you can’t do that!” I shouted, leaping from the car before Mike had even rolled to a stop.
Riley was stripped to the waist, showing off his inkwork. Like Moy, his wrists were shackled with a pair of cuffs.
“They’re my friends!”
A cop barred my way.
“Please stay away, ma’am.”
“It’s my house,” I told him. “And those are my friends – they’re guests, not thieves.”
I pushed forward.
“Moy!” I cried. “What happened?”
“The police busted us!” Moyheddin shouted back, as he was bundled into one of the patrol cars. “We were just having a smoke!”
The cop grabbed my arm.
“Miss, you want to stand back or I’ll book you for obstruction.”
“You can’t book me for obstruction on my own driveway. You ask Sergeant Maguire. Her son’s in that car over there!”
The patrolman looked over at Mike.
“Is that right?” he said, not in the least impressed.
I was about to shout for Mike to join us, when another emergency vehicle yelped up Brighton Avenue. The crowd of undead parted to allow an ambulance through.
Then the horror struck me. The truth of what this was all about.
“Mom!” I screamed.
I dodged the sweep of the cop’s arm and raced into the house. All the lights were on in the living room, and the placed heaved with uniforms. A cop was sifting through an ashtray on the coffee table, whilst another was speeding through a VHS of The Sound of Music on the TV. It was Moy’s favourite film, but these jerks thought that there was something illegal about a singing nun.
“Where’s my mom?!” I shouted into the face of the nearest copper.
“Are you Eileen Mann’s daughter?” asked the bull-headed officer.
“What of it?”
And then I got my reply. Alerted by my shrill scream, the two social workers Maggie and John appeared from the bedroom.
“What the hell have you done to her?” I asked.
Strong arms stopped me from attacking the smug pair.
“It’s okay, Officer,” said John, as calm as a priest taking confession. “You can let her go. I’ll explain.”
“Damn right you will,” I said.
Just then there was a commotion behind me, and paramedics bustled into the room, pushing a gurney. Maggie directed them into the bedroom.
“Is it Mom? Has she been hurt?”
“Your mother’s fine,” said John, his voice like oil on water. He laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “She’s absolutely fine. In fact, that’s why we’re here. To protect her.”
“She doesn’t need protection!” I said, shrugging him off.
“That’s for the court to decide.”
The court!
I made for the bedroom, but the giant police sergeant held me once again.
“Miss,” he said, “these are court-appointed officials. If you continue to prevent us doing our job, you will be arrested. You understand?”
“There’s no need to threaten her, Officer,” said John, pretending to be on my side. “She’s just upset.”
Then he turned to me.
“Lauren,” he said, “your mom needs care around the clock. We were called by the police because they found two suspicious characters in the house.”
“My friends.”
“They found them smoking marijuana. There’s a bag of it right there on the table.”
“Since when’s that been a crime?” I asked. The big cop ‘harrumphed’.
“Yes, okay, I know it’s illegal. I know that,” I shot back. “But it was inside. It wasn’t hurting anyone.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said John. “We already had a watch on this household because we deem your mother to be vulnerable. Do you know what that means?”
“I work at The Bean Counter but I’m not illiterate.”
“Good. Then I am sure you understand that it’s not an accepted standard of care to leave a person suffering from dementia in the custody of two drug-takers.”
“They aren’t drug-takers!” I screamed. “They’re my friends.”
“That’s for the courts to decide.”
The cop’s strong arms never relented in their grip, even as I cried. I never weep in public. Years of being ostracised at high school meant that I had developed the hide of a rhinoceros. But nothing could stop me when I saw what they had done to Mom.
“Eileen!” I wailed as the two paramedics wheeled Mom out of the bedroom. She was strapped to the gurney, and her face was glazed, eyes open but seeing nothing.
“Eileen!”
They rattled down the steps and wheeled her towards the ambulance. The ghostly crowd watched from the sidelines.
I escaped the big man’s grip just as the ambulance pulled away. By then it was all over. The cops flooded out of the house, one small bag of evidence between them. Some drugs bust! I later found out that they had been into my bedroom, under the mattress, and into my drawers.
Creeps!
And only then did Mike step from his car, head hung low, not wanting to meet my eye. I had forgotten all about him, and by the looks of it he had forgotten all about me.
Where had he been all this time?
“Mike!” I said angrily. I whirled him around to face the departing cops. “Tell them! You’re Molly’s son – they’ll
listen to you.”
But Mike shook his head.
“I can’t tell them anything, Scout. They’ve got a job to do, and I can’t interfere.”
“But they’ve just kidnapped my mom! You can’t stand there, be hero-of-the-hour, saviour of a drunken girl, and then not do anything about my mom!”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said.
“‘Do what you can?’ Jesus! You’ve just sat in your car for the past five minutes doing nothing!”
“I couldn’t do anything, Scout. Being Molly’s son doesn’t work like that. I don’t get special privileges.”
“Give me a break!”
“It’s true!
But I was deaf to his pleas. Ignoring the stares of the ghoulish onlookers, I stomped up the path towards the house. Waiting for me was John the social worker.
“Where’ve they taken her?” I demanded.
“Bethesda,” he replied.
“But that’s fifty miles away! And I’ve got no car!”
“You won’t be able to see her anyway, not for a week or two, until she’s been assessed.”
“She’s my mom!”
He smiled that damn sympathetic smile and held out a business card.
“This is the number of a local attorney. You may want to call her.”
“Screw you,” I said. Even when I swore he didn’t flinch, but gently laid the card on the table and backed out of the room. The door clicked after him. I suppose I should have been grateful that the cops hadn’t booted the door open. Moyheddin – ever trusting Moyheddin – must’ve opened it when they knocked.
What kind of dumb copper thinks that a drug fiend will open the door when the police come calling?
I slumped onto the sofa and put my feet onto the table amid the detritus of Moy’s self-rolled cigarettes. I had left my shoes on Stella’s lawn. Loose flakes of tobacco stuck to my damp feet. A flash of teal was reflected in the dull glass of the TV set. The dress didn’t look so good anymore.
Eileen’s chair was angled opposite. The fabric was buffed to an oily shine, and the cushion was squashed into a faithful impression of her rear. It had taken years to reach that state of perfection.
It was only then, with a thump to the heart, that I realised the house was empty. Mom had always been there, like an extra limb. But now, for the first time, I was alone.
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