by Kris Radish
“What the heck,” she says, bending down to slurp some of the Jameson off the top. “It’s my anger-management medicine.”
The Tuesday-night file folders are already on the table when Olivia sets down her whiskey-laced tea, slumps into the chair with a huge sigh, and places the folders on her lap. It has been one hell of a week.
The great arrow adventure remains lodged right between Olivia’s shoulders, where a persistent ache that she has taken to calling “a high pain in my ass” has developed. She knows it’s stress, a bit of confusion, the cold weather, and the old bed she plans to burn the moment she leaves this house.
She picks up her cup and slowly sips her tea. There’s something about the bitter, burnt taste of whiskey that she absolutely loves. Her year’s supply is running low, and Olivia only hopes that her Tuesday-night whining warriors will let her live until the December holiday season.
During the past ten years, all of her friends have conspired to give her a year’s supply of whiskey during the Christmas holidays. It started out as a kind of joke, because Olivia is famous in her circle of friends for never drinking anything but the Jameson. Her pals got together and put fake labels on the bottles: Breakfast Bottle for January, Lunch Bottle for March, Evening Sit-in-Your-Chair-and-Work Bottle for August.
She can only hope that when she finally decides to get the hell out of Chicago the fabulous holiday gifts follow her.
But this isn’t the most festive night of the week—interesting, yes, but festive? Maybe just a little, because it’s the evening she has set aside to decide what to do next with her four angry women. Olivia puts down her tea and begins tapping the fingers of her right hand on the files that are staring at her from her lap.
The arrow in the foot really was an accident. She has never reported accidents before if they were minor, and Grace refused to get professional treatment. Well, actually, Olivia told herself, Grace professionally treated herself.
More important, something did happen in between the first rifle shot and the blood in the sawdust.
The women let go of more than just arrows. Olivia saw it happening. She saw them begin to interact, and she convinced herself as she pulled into her driveway that even though the class had ended in semi-disaster, something positive did happen. And, in spite of the accident, she knows they all had fun.
The accident blossomed into the visit to Grace’s house, where Olivia discovered Grace has a boyfriend who is really not a boyfriend, because for some reason Grace is terrified to let a man into her life.
Could it be because he’s black? Or simply because he’s a man? Or maybe because of the wild teenage daughter, who was absolutely gracious and sweet?
Whatever the answer, Olivia knows that Grace has more than one issue on her plate, but she is also struck by how hard Grace must be working to keep her head above water. She knows a thing or two about being a single mother, and there isn’t one easy moment during the entire process.
Driving home from Grace’s house that night, Olivia made a decision not to tell her supervisor what happened. Now it’s time for her to move forward too.
Phyllis has started to nudge the chair with her rear end. Olivia gets the hint and dips into her pocket for a biscuit. She has a sip of her own treat as she slips her hand over the side and Phyllis gingerly takes the biscuit from her fingers.
Once, when she was much younger, Olivia treated a woman who claimed to be in love with her dog. It wasn’t the regular kind of love people have for their pets. It was a slightly insane kind of love. The woman slept with her black Labrador the way lots of people sleep with their pets, but she wanted to do more than just have the dog warm her bed.
This was when the woman had enough sense to come in and see Olivia. Unfortunately, it was the seventies and some goofballs had tried to marry their dogs, horses, pigs, and cows, and this was in Olivia’s pre-Phyllis years, when the mere thought of caring for a pet, on top of everything else, made her want to spontaneously start sobbing.
The woman eventually figured it out. The dog had to sleep on the floor, and the woman, ironically, ended up falling in love with a farmer, who convinced her that animals belong outside. The dog happily ended up in the barn, and Dr. Olivia Bayer realized that in her line of work she would never, ever be able to say, “Now I’ve seen everything.”
Lucky Phyllis gets to sleep on the end of the bed, and she’s smart enough never to wiggle out of bounds. Olivia can’t bear to think of her life without Phyllis, so she just doesn’t do it. One day at a time and one anger-management class at a time.
She picks up the four file folders and realizes that she doesn’t want to open them up. For a moment, she wonders if Leah and Kit connected. Then she thinks about Grace and hopes she can forgive Jane. A part of her would love to lock them in a room for a few hours without any sharp objects and then see what happens.
Of course, her heart aches the most for Leah. Leah, whom Grace knew to ask for help. Leah, whom, now that she thinks about it, she must hook up with her friend who runs the clothing cooperative that helps outfit women who have little or nothing and are trying hard to change their lives.
Jane is a huge question mark, and Olivia would like the chance to get her alone, which she may do, and ask her why she shot the arrow. Kit and Grace look alternately sad and upset, but Grace is the one who appears the most embarrassed by what she has done.
But what about the next assignment?
Olivia has a million ideas. A class like this for some smart people doesn’t have to last forever or very long at all. And these women are all smart and likable in their own interesting, if not confounding, ways.
“Eureka! Phyllis, I know exactly what the women need to do next!” Olivia says excitedly, moving her hand back and forth behind Phyllis’s right ear.
Phyllis has no idea what Olivia is talking about, but she adores the way Olivia knows how much she loves to have her ear rubbed. And something about the tone of Olivia’s voice—so soft, so low—makes Phyllis turn and gently lick Olivia’s hand very quickly.
Some people might call it a loving dog kiss, but Olivia calls it a sweet answer.
“I guess that means yes, eh?”
Phyllis kisses Olivia again.
Olivia is too tired to get up and get more tea. She wishes she could train Phyllis to use the microwave. Wouldn’t that be something! Olivia chuckles, thinking about the headline: “Old Psychologist Teaches Old Dog New Trick.”
This is when Olivia decides to double-dose the women. She’s going to send them on another secret mission and bring them back to class to talk about it. In front of each other. It’s time. She throws the folders back onto the table next to her and reaches for her cup of tea.
There is one sweet sip left, and the warmth of the cup is fading fast. Olivia lifts the cup to her lips and drinks the last few ounces as if they were liquid gold. Then she sets the cup down, closes her eyes, pushes her head back against the chair, and almost wishes she had trained Phyllis to sit in her lap. She lets her hand fall back onto Phyllis’s warm, furry back and feels her dog snuggle into her soft little bed.
“Wait until they get their next assignments, Phyllis,” Olivia says sleepily. “I’ll set everything up in the morning and have the envelopes hand-delivered tomorrow afternoon. I wish I could be there to see their faces when they open up their envelopes.”
Phyllis kisses Olivia one more time and then they both fall asleep, dreaming about warm hands, sunshine, and the possibilities every tomorrow brings.
26
The Green Dot
Kit is sitting at her kitchen table—her new office, she jokes to the few people who still speak to her. So far today that includes the UPS man, who delivered a book on how to write résumés, the papergirl, and the woman next door, who was obviously trying to be polite and couldn’t care less about Kit’s so-called office.
The neighbor was getting out of her car when Kit happened to be in the front yard waiting for the newspaper. The poor neighbor woman, who ha
s probably heard more from Kit’s side of the fence than she should have during the past few years, had a tight smile that was so forced it looked to Kit as if she had just had major plastic surgery.
Kit didn’t even mind. She’s never liked the old bat anyway. Instead of ignoring her, Kit waved and said, “Have a great day.” The woman almost fainted. Kit loved how that made her feel.
“Oh, my God,” she laughed as she ran into the house. “That made me happy!” Maybe next week she’ll have the woman over for coffee. Why not?
She picks up the paper, grabs her mug of coffee, and starts reading.
There’s another political mess down at City Hall, the winter is supposed to be worse than ever, and the Chicago Bears may as well call it a season. Kit drops her eyes to the bottom of the front page; there’s no sense rushing to the Help Wanted ads because there won’t be much there anyway.
The story at the bottom of the page is a killer in every sense of the word: “Woman Kills Mother in a Fit of Rage.” Kit has just taken a sip of coffee, and when she reads the headline the coffee ends up all over the newspaper. Coffee is also dripping down the sides of her mouth, and Kit hastily wipes it on the cuff of her long-sleeved T-shirt and keeps reading.
A forty-three-year-old woman from East Lake, California, was sentenced to fifty years in prison Monday for killing her mother. Tamantha Babcock hit her mother, Louisa Armstrong, numerous times in the head with a ceramic coffee cup and then strangled the woman with an electrical cord.
“I just snapped,” Babcock told authorities. “It was a buildup of years of rage and hate and anger. I am so sorry. I loved my mother when I was a little girl. I did. I remember that.”
Babcock plead guilty to the first-degree murder charge to “spare her family any further grief.”
When authorities arrived at the house Babcock shared with her mother, they found Armstrong lying on the floor in the kitchen. Babcock had also placed duct tape over her mother’s mouth and nose, “just to make certain she was really dead.”
The judge who sentenced Babcock said her sentence was essentially for life, and that if she managed to live for fifty years she would be an old woman when she was released.
Authorities investigating the murder said it is highly unusual for women to be involved in a crime this violent.
“We have seen an increase in these types of rage-fueled murders,” said Detective Bryce Gault, of the East Lake Police Department. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. When you cross that line there is no turning back.”
Babcock is the mother of two children who are young adults. They did not attend her sentencing.
Kit can barely breathe as she reads the story a second time. Then she holds the paper up so that she can get a better look at this Tamantha Babcock.
She looks like an old woman who has had a very hard life. Her greasy hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and there are deep, dark lines in her face.
Wow!
The woman staring at Kit from the newspaper looks the way an angry woman is supposed to look—rode hard and put away wet, used up, old before her time, lost, alone, and a total sad story.
Kit keeps going back to what the woman said about the night she killed her mother. Killed her mother. Sweet hell! “Years of rage and hate and anger.” She reads the story three more times before she puts down the paper, sets her hands on top of it, and then nervously starts rotating her wedding ring with the thumb of her left hand.
When she turns her head either way, everything looks so normal. There’s the door to the garage and the opening into the living room when she looks the other way. Light is streaming in through the windows, the clock on the stove is ticking, the breakfast dishes are still lined up on the counter waiting to go into the dishwasher, Peter’s favorite and most worn Chicago Cubs blue-and-red sweatshirt is draped over the chair he always sits in, and the refrigerator rattles every fifteen seconds when the slowly dying motor kicks in.
Kit starts to move her left leg up and down so fast it feels as if the entire floor is jiggling. She flips the newspaper article upside down, smooths it out with her hands, and gets up to refill her coffee cup.
She is so not like the woman in the newspaper. Her life has been wonderful in so many ways, hasn’t it?
There is a window above the sink and next to the coffeepot that looks out onto their small backyard. The old wooden swing set with metal climbing bars still sits in the center of the yard. Peter has wanted to take it down and extend the patio for years, but Kit refuses to let him.
Some of the happiest hours of her life have been spent standing right where she is now, with a cup of coffee, a mug of tea, or a glass of wine in her hand. When Peter built the play area for their daughter years ago, Kit was emphatic that it be placed so that she could watch Sarah and half the neighborhood play from this very window.
Thinking about those days causes a wave of emotion to rise up in her that is absolutely lovely. Kit leans into the counter to steady herself, sets down her cup, and pushes herself as close to the window as possible.
And then she truly remembers.
The sweet shouting from all the neighbor kids playing in the “fort,” as everyone had decided to call it. There were branches, piles of rocks, pails and shovels, brooms, buckets, and after a while it looked as if someone had pulled up and simply dropped off a load of junk that was headed for the dump.
When the kids got older, the piles of junk got larger because they could roam the neighborhood and rummage through garbage cans. On garbage day, especially in the summer, Sarah would get up early so they could cruise the streets and collect new things for the fort. And their yard became the neighborhood magnet.
The kids brought home a three-legged wagon, old bicycles, a bag of nails, a rubber boat with a hole in the middle that was immediately cut into pieces and used in some wild game they invented. Little Sarah convinced Peter to build an extension on the fort, and for weeks they worked together until there was a closed-in room halfway up the oak tree that became like a second home to at least seven neighbor kids.
They put in a pulley to haul their treasures up and down, and then gradually, toward the end of middle school, the fort became silent. There were new noises—soccer games and school activities that changed almost as much as all the kids did—but the fort remained in Kit’s mind as an echo that she did not want to erase.
Without realizing it, Kit starts to cry as she remembers the fort and everything else that is now missing. She misses the sounds of people in the house, doors slamming, the phone ringing, cars beeping in the driveway, the way Sarah pounded up the steps so hard it sounded as if she was dropping bowling balls each time a foot hit a step.
Kit wipes her eyes right on top of the coffee stain and turns away from the window. The memories are still here. The sweet signs and sighs of life.
“It was all wonderful,” she says, turning back toward the table and the newspaper. “It still is.”
Kit goes back for her coffee, and when she turns past the refrigerator she catches a quick glimpse of herself in the shiny door. There is so much to live for, so much to be thankful for, so much around the next corner. She suddenly can’t wait for whatever it is that she will see when she gets there. Wherever that might be!
She is so very different from the woman in the newspaper, and so are the other women in her Tuesday-night class. What a chance they have all been given! For the first time, she sees the connecting link between them.
Jane, Grace, and Leah have lives that are each very different from one another’s, but here they are—connected by one moment, one action, one mistake. Why is it so hard to see this? Why can’t there be a simple way to get past the differences in their lives that seem to shadow everything else?
Kit throws her hands down on the table, grabs the newspaper, folds it over and over until it’s about the size of a napkin, then carries it into the garage and stuffs it as far down in the recycling bin as possible.
Kit decides to d
o something bold. She has to.
She stands helpless for a moment and then, before she can change her mind, she races up the stairs to the second floor and goes into her bedroom closet. Her mother’s wooden jewelry box hasn’t moved and Kit picks it up, backs up into the room, where she can see, and quickly opens the box. Resting on top is a white envelope. Ignoring whatever else might be in the box, Kit tucks the box under her arm and opens the letter.
Dearest Kit. I have wanted to say I am sorry for most of your life … Kit stops, quickly folds the letter back into place, and returns it and the jewelry box to the back of the closet. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, she can finish it. Maybe.
Then she runs back downstairs, grabs Peter’s red-and-blue Cubs sweatshirt, pulls it over her head, swipes the keys off the counter, and decides to walk as fast and as far as she can to clear her mind. Dr. Bayer would be proud.
But just as she’s coming back inside she hears the doorbell ring. Who in the world? There’s a man standing there with an envelope in his hand. “Akins Messenger Service,” he says. “I have something for you.”
He leaves, and Kit is left standing with the envelope. Another assignment! She rips it open, reads what it says, and bends over laughing. What next?
All she can think about, as she hits the sidewalk and starts walking so quickly that in some circles her gait would be considered a run, is how that damn Dr. Bayer is right about everything. Absolutely everything.
27
The Black Dot
Not so far from the very spot where Kit is pounding the sidewalk, Leah is in the shelter kitchen finishing up the morning dishes. The newest residents always get dish duty, and Leah couldn’t care less. She’d scrub the toilets with a toothbrush if they wanted her to. Cleaning up the kitchen and doing dishes is absolutely exhilarating and Leah is moved to tears, tears of joy, every time she gets to touch a dish, clean it, and then put it back where it belongs.