by KT Morrison
“Nia, no...”
“A real man would have stopped her.”
“Nia, don’t say that...Odie...”
“You let her do that to me. You liked it!” she wailed, slamming her fist into her thigh. “You think I deserve it!” she yelled, her voice quivering and crying.
“No, Nia, I don’t...”
“She just did everything you fuckin wanted to do to me but you’re too much of a coward...”
She stood up weakly, blood pattered on the floor in front of him. She still hid her face. She stumbled away from him and he let her go. He watched her long legs take her into the kitchen, her hand held out to steady herself against the wall as she went. She slid her purse off the counter and she went out the back door. He sat and listened. Heard the BMW start, heard the Pirellis scatter gravel against the garage as she floored it down their alley.
He felt like he weighed a thousand pounds. His hands lay heavy in his lap. He turned and looked up the stairs at Odie’s closed door, didn’t know if he’d ever be able to get off the floor.
NIA
She drove through the tears. She blinked the wet away while she careened onto the Expressway. Her face throbbed, she felt herself swelling. Her lips were puffed, she tasted blood.
In the streetlight of Roncesvalles she’d seen what Maria had done. Saw in her rearview mirror. She was scratched, bloodied, she would have two black eyes. Her nose might be broken.
Her head pounded and her neck ached. She deserved it. Deserved it all. Twelve blissful years with Geoff and she’d forgotten that she was a terrible person. She didn’t deserve those years. She broke her Geoff. He was resilient and it took a long time but she’d done it.
She pressed her flat French Connection down on the BMW’s pedal and felt herself sink into the seat. She darted between slower cars, heard them honking. The speedometer climbed. One-eighty, one-ninety...she broke two-hundred. Taillights streaked in long red serpentine trails and she saw the dead old Unilever building floating straight ahead. She hit two-thirty.
The elevated Expressway took a bend here, a sharp left ninety degrees as it turned to the Don Valley Parkway. Sky and vacant building rushed towards her as she rocketed towards the curve. It was a twenty foot drop. She squeezed the wheel, felt Maria’s flesh under her nails. Maybe she would make it, maybe she wouldn’t. She didn’t care.
Part VII
Eternal
33
Barrel Works
Saturday, September 2nd
GEOFF
He took Odie to Centre Island because he couldn’t stay in their empty house one minute more without going out of his mind. They’d headed out the door at eleven in the morning and they went to the bakery. French Toast for two and they quietly picked through their brunch looking for their appetite.
Since Wednesday night his Odie was chapfallen. Her sad eyes perpetually widened with doubt and worry. Where was her mom? When would Daddy stop crying? Why did that woman hurt Mommy? He did his best for her despite the pain he felt in his heart. He was dying, but he had to be strong for his little girl.
It was a sunny Saturday and it was the first day of the last summer long weekend. The weather was perfect and the streets of their Roncesvalles village teemed with cheerful faces. After breakfast, he'd looked along the village, towards Garden Street, towards the alley that would take them to their home. He turned the opposite way. He didn't know where he was going but he couldn't take his little girl back to that stuffy little house and sit and wait to hear from Nia.
She’d left them. The single most selfish, shockingly heartless thing she'd done. Worse than fucking Rocco at the wedding while they all waited for her. The worst thing she had done.
She’d left her family and they didn't know where she was. Two and a half days and she hadn't sent a text or made a call, reached out in any way. She let them think whatever horror their imaginative Kane minds might think. She was dead. Maria caught up with her and ran her off the road. She’d suffered a concussion and she drove off into a ditch and they’d find her a week from now, her starved body still clutched in the leather seat, slung over her seatbelt. She’d killed herself. Parked the car and ran a hose into the cabin and thought of all her wrongs while she drifted off to a forever sleep. Suicide ran in her family. Then there were the intangibles. Dirty horrifying things he’d think of when Odie was asleep and he would lay and watch the ceiling, his eyes sore from crying. She'd been abducted. Raped and murdered at a dark gas station. She was being tortured right now, her fingers being cut off one by one by a psychopath who pretended to need her help at the convenience store before thumping her over the head and wrestling her into his battered van.
The truth was she was with Rocco. He knew she had to be. He’d called the police, they told him they wouldn't file a missing persons report yet but they said they would look for her car. They hadn't called back. He'd called Ang. Broke down and cried on the phone with her. If there had been any doubt in Ang’s mind about Nia’s fidelity that was now discharged. She’d fucked another man. He couldn't call Donna, away on her honeymoon, couldn’t call any of the others. Angie told him she would get the girls together and they “would fuckin find her.” He called the hospitals but there was no trace of her. Checked the credit cards to see if there had been purchases but there hadn't been. He’d called Dino. Dino was alarmed. He knew Maria had paid a visit but he didn't know Nia was missing. He said he’d look for her, said he’d call back. He never did. He called Nia’s mom but there was no way she knew where Nia was and she of course didn’t. Acted unsurprised that Nia was missing. He even called Rocco. Not at home, he called his personal phone. The number wasn’t working. He wondered if his phone was ringing out in the woods somewhere. He called Dragon Pools every hour on the hour on the second day she was gone. They said she didn't come in. That was a weird answer. She hadn't started back since she’d been fired. He told them to have Rocco call. They said they would. He never called. He knew she was with him. Fuck her.
So they walked together, father and daughter, hand in hand on what should be a perfect day but they were both deeply wounded by what they’d seen and by Nia’s brutal absence. They walked, two sad faces surrounded by sunshine and happiness. They got on a streetcar and even though there were empty seats Odie sat in his lap and she put her arms around his neck and she hugged her face against him. They both stared blankly out the window as the streets passed by. Then they were at the waterfront, walking along Queen’s Quay. He saw the ferry on the lake and he walked to the railing edge. They stood and watched it come to shore, two-tiered black and white painted, flags fluttering along her roof. The decks were dotted with people coming from the island to the city. The wind tugged at their hair, seagulls cawed, and he knew he’d take Odie to the island. She loved the amusement park there, Centreville, with its turn of the century attractions and its small scale vintage railroad. When he’d drawn the first Choo book he’d brought little Odie out there for the day with his sketchbook.
Odie stood between his legs while they rode the ferry surrounded by other passengers and cyclists. She was bewildered, staring at nothing, her eyes turned to the grey-painted deck and she sucked and chewed her bottom lip. She’d witnessed something so horrible he couldn't imagine what her little brain made of it. She’d seen a woman she barely knew, if she recognized her at all, storm into their very own safe and warm house and grab her mother and beat her senseless. She heard her mother’s screams, she saw her mother’s blood. He put his arms around her again and hugged her so she wouldn't see his tears.
On the island he got her on the miniature train and they rode that through the perimeter of the park. He bought her candy floss and a candy apple. She picked at the floss and gave him a weak smile. She didn't touch her candy apple. He had a bite and threw it in the trash.
He took her to the Pony Express which was a pathway through a park where he could hold the reins on a pony while she rode on its back. The pony sauntered slackly along its way, the worn path it tru
dged lined by two knee-high railings so it wouldn’t get any ideas of freedom.
“Where do you think he’d go if he didn’t have these rails?” he asked her. The chocolate-painted wood brushed at his leg as he walked along next to her, eye-to-eye, as she gently rocked on the back of her pony.
It made her smirk and that simple little tug at the corner of her cute mouth made him burst with hope. “I don’t know,” she sang. “What’s on the other side of the island?”
“Well, if he swam far enough he’d be in America.”
“What would he do there?”
“I don’t know. Land of opportunity. You suppose he might go in the mountains? Live with the wild horses?”
She giggled. “I don’t think so, Daddy. I think he likes candy floss.”
He peeked forward at the black slit pupil of the old pony, under its long sad curled lashes. “I think you’re right. He's pretty domesticated. He might miss all you little kids. He squeezed her knee where she was ticklish and it made her jump and laugh. They walked in silence a while, the sun filtering through the green canopy.
Odie said, “Will mommy come home tonight?”
“I hope so, baby, I hope so,” he sighed.
“Why did that lady hurt mommy?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked. He was worried that she didn't feel safe any more. He sighed, feeling a weight inside him, settling on his organs. “Baby, Mommy really hurt her feelings. You know that will never happen to you, right? It’ll never happen again. Mommy and I would never let anyone hurt you.”
She nodded, her tiny Nia-mouth twisted up fearfully.
He rubbed her bare tan thigh. “You want to go home?”
Her mouth curled and she said quietly, “Can we go to the haunted house?”
“Odie, really? Are you sure?” She’d always wanted to go and he always told her she was too young. She was seven now and she was a brave little being, but still, given recent events he worried.
“Are you afraid, Dad?” she said, her face morose and she ran her fingers through his hair while she looked in his eyes.
“Will you watch out for me if I get scared?” he said and he rested his head on her shoulder as he and Odie and the horse lumbered along the peaceful path.
“I’ll watch out for you,” she said.
The line for the haunted house ride was long when they arrived. Odie clung to his back for a while, her legs around his hips; she spent a little time on his shoulders too, but most of the wait was spent swinging from the chain link barricades that shaped the direction of the line. The ride was really called The Haunted Barrel Works, and you rode in a car painted like a hollowed out barrel on tracks through the dark. He couldn't remember what was in there, it had been more than twenty years since he’d been on it. Animatronics, he remembered, vintage frontier people or something, he wasn’t sure but he had a fear from his past over the ride.
When it was their turn, the cute teenage boy in skinny jeans running the ride helped Odie in next to her dad and then he lowered the bar and winked at O. O scuttled across the bench and she hugged his waist. She had a fearful smile on her face, and he put an arm around her. He squeezed himself next to her, realized how much space there was, room for one more if their Nia was here. The barrel bumped and rocked on its rails as it got underway. There was no reason Nia couldn't be here with them. He’d forgive her of all her sins, no matter what. It was her own shame that kept her away and he wanted her to know she was loved. The car bumped and lurched suddenly through the entrance doors to the ride and they were thrust into the dark.
Something he’d always wonder, forever, was if saving Odie first that night was the right choice. He would never forget that night for the rest of his life. The images still flashed out at him from the dark when he closed his eyes. Her condemnation, cried to him, stabbed him so deeply. The fragile sound of her voice, her fear, her pain, her shame. He wished he could take it all away. Restore her to her happy self. The Nia he knew, not the one who lived her dangerous separate life. He couldn't have stopped Maria. You wouldn't hit a girl. Or was he afraid if he did, her big bad husband would hit him back? Was he a coward? Nia said he was.
Lights flashed and sirens blared loudly in their ears. Odie flinched against him. He squinted. The car lurched to the right abruptly and there was an ogrish pirate sitting in a chair. He lifted his arms, holding the lid to a barrel in each hand and disembodied ghoulish heads rose with it. Odie screamed and squeezed him tighter.
Was there truth to what Nia said? Did he waste time rushing Odie away instead of ending the violence because some part of him thought she was getting what she deserved? That was impossible. He loved her so much. He didn't want that. Maybe though some deep part of him was just letting her actions take their course, letting the universe do what needed to be done. But he deserved it too. He was complicit. Was this his punishment? Taking the love of his life away from him?
They rattled through the dark and his tears came. He couldn't lose her. He would be nothing without his Nia. She was everything to him. Lights flashed on scenes of gore behind plexiglass, the car whipped right and left, blazing him dioramas of gruesome horror; heads in boxes, corpses in coffins, rattling through psychedelic ghostly archways that he remembered from his childhood. Fear built up within him, rose like a wave and he sobbed, Odie screamed with glee as a pirate pointed muskets at her and then they whipped away at the last second. A scene lit up ahead, a man with his head in a guillotine, “Oh no,” Odie laughed and she reached up and covered her dad’s eyes. She felt his tears. The blade fell and the man’s head was severed.
Did Nia like the chaos? Is that why it happened to her? She drove people to the brink because she liked to see them out of control. Did she want to see Geoff out of control? Did she want Geoff to hit her? Show passion like Dino showed passion and punch her right in her flat stomach for her transgressions.
The car bumped the exit doors and they were in the sunlight again, the car lurched and chugged to a stop. Geoff blinked and rubbed his face and he sobbed. The tears wouldn't stop. Odie climbed up on the seat, standing next to him, he turned so she wouldn't see him cry. He heard people laughing. Laughing like they thought this man was pretending he was scared so he’d make his daughter laugh. Odie hugged his back and she dug her chin into his shoulder and she whispered, “Don’t cry, Daddy.”
NIA
She heard the drone of a motor, chopped and broken as it bounced on distant waves. He was coming back.
She twisted on the hard mattress, her back still hurting and her neck tight and stiff, and looked out the window touching the very edge of the bed. Out on the lake there was a white dot on the horizon, riding the choppy waves, jouncing between the line of the water and the vast blue sky above. The sound of the motor came and went with the wind.
She was in the small square bedroom on his houseboat, the bed taking up the whole room, wall to wall, a single door opening out to the cabin of the boat. It was hot and sunny out there, and she wore just her panties, laying on the sheets topless, her hair tangled around her. Swimming had been on the plans but being out in the middle of nowhere with no shore in sight had freaked her out. Sunlight had given her a splitting headache and she came into the bedroom to rest her head. She’d suffered a mild concussion.
Her legs swung out the open door and she slipped off the bed, out of the bedroom, her bare feet touching down in the cabin. Her shirt was under the duvet somewhere and she swept her hands around til she found it then pulled it on over her head, flipped her hair out of the neck hole and headed for the mirror. The houseboat was clean, the sun gleaming off all its shiny surfaces, making her squint. There were children’s toys littered around, swimming goggles and fins, inflatables, now limp and deflated—bright plastic things laying flaccid by the sliding glass door to the back deck.
The face in the mirror was looking a little better. There were black crescents under each eye, the right side looking a little worse. The swelling in her lips had gone down, but ther
e was a ragged line, getting fainter but still visible that ran from her cheek to the top curl of her upper lip. Her nose was swollen. Broken, the doctor said, but it wasn’t out of alignment. Breathing had been difficult at first, better now, and when she touched it she could hear a crackling inside her own head. She’d torn two nails, but press-ons covered those now, and other than a few dark round bruises on her stomach and on her arms she wasn't too worse for wear. Her most gruesome injuries were to her heart and soul.
The sounds of his boat got closer and she went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Took out an ice cold can of Coke and her blue gel ice pack. She threw the ice pack on the counter and pressed the can to her forehead. He was going to ask if she’d been putting that ice on her face like she was supposed to.
The motor grew loud and close then geared down to an idle as the dinghy coasted to the houseboat. He was out there now in his sunglasses and T-shirt, she saw him bobbing below the level of the high deck as he tied the dinghy to the cleat on the side of the boat. She wandered out the kitchen through the eating area and slid the door open to walk outside with her Coke in her hand.
He’d pushed up a cardboard box filled with bottles and different bags, reaching up and sliding it across the no-slip deck. He climbed up, his huge dragon-covered arms rippling with the effort of pulling his bulk to stand at the back of the boat.
“Rocco,” she said.
He turned around quick and he came to her. His arms went around her and he held her for a moment. “Nia. Are you okay? How do you feel?”
“Better,” she said, her arms around him, her hand holding the Coke delicately away.
He stood back, smoothed her hair and she looked at her reflection in his glasses, seeing his muscle, his big hands caressing the sides of her own frightened face.