Anna didn’t leave the table. Her hands shook as she tried to smooth the ruined pages of her birthday book. She scraped her bitten nails across the orange streaks over the Bay of Marseilles, trying to scratch off the damage, to bring back the mountains and sky. Her tears poured over the page, running into the hole left by the magenta point.
Nothing worked. The book was ruined. Not just the picture, the whole book. She couldn’t stop petting the damaged sky. She wouldn’t stop smoothing the crumpled mountains.
Her mother came back into the kitchen, swearing to herself. She grabbed a broom and dustpan, calling her father a crazy sonofabitch who needed to be put away, promising herself that she was done with his shit, that this was the last time he would act like that under her roof. She kept talking as she headed back to the living room. She still muttered when she returned to dump the pieces of a broken lamp into the garbage can by the door.
Anna didn’t move. She kept her hands on the tragedy before her, waiting for her mother to notice it. It wasn’t until her mother came back from mopping up something wet that she looked at Anna. She sighed and looked down at the book beneath Anna’s hands.
“He ruined your book.”
Anna nodded, trying not to cry.
Her mother sighed again, sounding exhausted. She reached for the book, shaking her head as she leafed through the ruined pages. “He shouldn’t have done that, Anna.”
I know, Anna wanted to scream. That was mine and I did a good job. You should have seen my sky and I got the smoke right and the water. She wanted to scream all of this but tears closed her throat. She wanted her mother to shout those things for her, to be angry on her behalf.
But when her mother spoke again, Anna couldn’t breathe.
“He was right though.” Her mother shut the book and looked Anna in the eye. “Coloring isn’t creation. It’s obedience.” She headed back into the living room, tossing the book into the garbage on top of the broken lamp.
Anna wanted to scream, to throw a chair like her father did. She wanted to rage and scrawl crayons on the wall until the dingy kitchen disappeared under midnight blue and burnt sienna and brick red. She wanted to rescue her book, to pull it from the shards of glass and twisted wire and secret it back to her room where she would color around the scars.
But she didn’t. She gathered up her crayons from the tabletop and the floor where they had fallen. She put them back into the box in their proper place. Even the broken periwinkle.
Then she closed the box and dropped it into the garbage can.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’m home now.
I don’t remember seeing anything on my way home except my feet, step step step, through snow and mud, step step step until I finally made it up the stairs to my apartment. I didn’t even stop to get my mail. I have enough on my plate as it is.
Bless her heart, Meredith handled my mess like a pro. She didn’t flinch at the eruption and wouldn’t let me clean it up. Of course she had towels and a face cloth on her shelves, cool water, breath mints, even a toothbrush still in the packaging that I didn’t take her up on. She brushed my hair off my forehead and pressed a cold cloth to the back of my neck, whispering reassurances and rubbing my back. She apologized for upsetting me. She said she was ashamed of herself for being such a ghoul.
I said I wanted to go home.
Of course she offered to drive me. She offered to lay out a sleeping bag behind my desk and let me sleep a bit first, because of course she has a sleeping bag in there somewhere. When I said no to both, she revealed the depth of her worry and offered to call Jeannie to come pick me up. I must have looked like hell. The last thing I wanted at that moment was anyone hovering over me. The second to last thing was to have to explain to Meredith why I reacted the way I did. She didn’t ask. She assumed good thoughts. She doesn’t know me very well.
I assured her I just wanted to walk, that I needed the air. I apologized and worked on looking sufficiently recovered so that she finally let me leave. She walked me down the hall, still rubbing my back through my coat. She followed me out onto the walkway like I had wanted to follow Jeannie and she watched me all the way to the steps at the corner of the building. Like Jeannie, I didn’t look back. I didn’t wave. I just wanted to go home.
Now I’m home and I think I made a huge mistake.
For one thing, I stink. I haven’t showered in more days than I want to add up and the sweet/sour hangover smell has been replaced by the sharp bite of flop sweat. Walking a mile uphill hasn’t sweetened that any. I need a shower. I need hot water to power through the grease in my hair and thick clouds of steam to clean my pores.
You can do this, I think, staring at myself through toothpaste spatters on the mirror.
I peel off my sweater and my long-sleeved T-shirt and I unbutton my jeans. I’ll have to unlace my boots and peel off my socks. I hold my reflection’s gaze as I think about the steps I need to go through to accomplish this goal, but even these simple thoughts don’t stick. Even my own eyes don’t hold my attention.
All I can see is the tub behind me.
All I can think about is getting into that tub.
I know I cannot do it.
My reflection agrees and we break our stare-off when we collapse onto our elbows on the vanity. I grab a hand towel and shove it under the water and use it to scrub at my face and around my neck and under my arms. I wind up soaking my bra and I have the feeling I’m just pushing dirt around but that’s all I can manage right now. I step over my clothes into the hallway and back into the living room.
The best I can say about my living room is that I’m suitably dressed for it. Jeannie and I left quite a path throughout the space, ratcheting up my usual level of chaos. Wine bottles roll circles around my feet as I step through them. An Oreo package sticks to a plate of dried enchilada sauce. For some reason, we threw clothes around the room—socks, T-shirts, several pairs of shoes. I grab a shirt that looks like mine and pull it over my head. My wet bra soaks through the fabric and there’s a hole under the right arm.
It’s damaged. Like Ellis.
My stomach lurches at the thought and the wave of nausea propels me out the door, into the cold air, hard against the railing outside. I knock icicles off onto the level below and the chill races into the damp spots on my shirt. Wind blows up from the parking lot, icy and wet, and I hold my face up to it, letting it draw tears from my eyes.
I’m in West Virginia now, I tell myself. Nobody knows me. I have no family here. It’s almost March. I’m in the mountains now; I’m off the prairies and the farmlands. I’m high on rocks and buffered from wind. It’s almost March and in March everything becomes okay again. It’s almost March and I’m in West Virginia and nothing has followed me here.
To prove this to myself and to keep from freezing against the metal railing, I stalk the length of the walkway past the other apartments. I kick cigarette butts and coffee cups out of the way. Phone books in plastic bags lay abandoned and flyers for Gilead’s only Chinese restaurant peek out of cracks and doorframes. Straight ahead, if I blink through my wind-drawn tears, I see trees. Pine trees and bare oaks rise up on the ridge across the road, deer tracks wind through rhododendron bushes bent under the snow and everywhere cardinals pop like Christmas lights against the white mountainside.
It looks nothing like Nebraska.
It looks nothing like Missouri.
I could stare at it forever.
My stomach cramps and I bend over against the railing, looking down into the less lovely corner of the parking lot where the dumpsters hold back the dirty mountains of snow plowed from the lot. More animal tracks, more garbage, more dirt. A gust picks up a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup and bounces it across the surface of the ice. More wind blows and I lean out into it until I hear a flapping noise. Some sort of plastic sheeting has blown in from the road and gotten caught on the edge of the dumpster. Its fra
yed edges snap-snap in the sharp wind and that’s all it takes to make my stomach heave once more. I paint the dirty snow below me with the watery contents of my stomach. I’m shivering and try to kid myself that I’ve got the flu.
The clouds part and a wide swath of sunlight falls onto the corner of the landing, striking my left shoulder and cutting me on the diagonal. The wind quiets and I close my eyes, feeling one side of my body warming, one side tingling in the cold. With my eyes closed, motors on the road sound like the ocean, and the snow cracks and slides off of tree branches and rooftops with whispers that almost sound human. I drift. Tears dry and glue my eyelids closed and I drift.
“Ms. Ray?”
I jerk awake and my left knee buckles, banging against the metal railing. My hands ache with cold, and blood burns as it rushes into the indentation left behind from gripping the railing. How long have I been standing here?
I turn and the movement sets my whole body shivering. Whatever sun I’d been enjoying is gone behind the ridge but there’s still plenty of daylight. Detective Hinton stands halfway down the walkway, Neighborgall several feet behind her. She approaches me slowly, her jacket open, her gun visible but her hands in front of her.
“Ms. Ray, are you all right?”
“Yeah.” I almost stumble on my numb feet as I walk her way. Something flakes off the corner of my mouth when I speak and I rub my lips with icy fingers. I need to pull it together quickly because I remember what I look like. She’s watching me so I go with the obvious answer. “Sorry, I think I’ve got the flu or something. Came home early. Needed air.”
She nods as I approach and then pass her. “You don’t look good.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“Standing out in the cold probably isn’t a good idea. Where’s your coat?”
“In my apartment. I just stepped outside for a second to get some air.”
Hinton and her partner might know that’s a lie; they might have been watching me for a while. I expect them to follow me into my apartment but neither has moved.
“Did you want something, Detective? Did you bring me my phone?”
“We’re not done with it yet.”
“Do you want to come in?”
She glances at Neighborgall, who doesn’t move, and then steps toward my door. “We’re actually here for another reason. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind stepping inside.” That’s when I see Neighborgall’s glance flit to the door beside mine, his hand on his belt, close to his gun. Three uniformed officers stand on the stairs. All of them have their radios turned off, no telltale squawking giving their presence away.
“You’re here for Bobby,” I say.
“So you know who lives next door to you.”
“I’ve never met him. I’ve never even seen him, but I’ve heard them enough to know it would just be a matter of time until you all showed up. Bobby is a nasty drunk.”
“And Karmen?”
A lock clicks and Hinton spins away from me to stand with her partner in front of the door. I recognize Bobby’s snarling voice.
“What the fuck’s going on out here? You wanna—”
I step back out onto the landing, peering around to get my first glimpse of my neighbor. He’s smaller than I expected, skinny. I guess after all the fights I pictured more of a big ’roided-up meathead. The cops consider him big enough, because Neighborgall and Hinton both have their hands very close to their guns.
“Robert Alistair.” Neighborgall speaks loudly and clearly. “We are looking for Karmen Rene Bennett. We have a warrant to search your premises.”
Bobby doesn’t move out of the door. “What do you want with her?”
“Is Karmen Bennett here?” Hinton asks.
Why are they looking for Karmen here? Katie is Bobby’s girlfriend. I’m waiting for him to explain that to them when he yells back into the apartment and solves the mystery.
“K.B.! K.B.! Wake up! The fucking cops are here looking for you.”
Not Katie. K.B. Karmen Bennett. I’ve been listening to her getting slapped around for months. I remember the sound of glass breaking recently. I wonder if that was what happened to her foot sculpture.
Hinton and Neighborgall have pushed into the apartment, followed by the uniforms. Neighborgall shoves out a piece of paper that must be the search warrant. Bobby’s not interested in reading it, giving way to the officers with disgust and what looks like familiarity. He stands there, shaking his head as they pass him, and then sees me on the landing.
“The fuck are you looking at?”
He’s got a black eye, a bandage on his hand, and a massive purple bruise on his arm that disappears under the cut sleeve of his WVU T-shirt. I look him over from head to toe.
“I hope someone beats the shit out of you,” I say and go back into my apartment.
They’re searching the place. I hear kitchen cabinets slamming, silverware clattering. Karmen protests but it’s not until she yells at Bobby to shut up that she sounds like the annoying neighbor I’m used to. It’s strange trying to connect the two realities. I think of how many times Karmen sat across from me, bruised and cut, as I sympathized with her over a lack of sleep. I feel like a shit.
Stomachache or no, I think about opening a bottle of wine. I don’t feel like drinking it and my stomach twitches at the thought, but this doesn’t seem like a good time to break with tradition. I’m putting a lot of thought into this debate when I hear Bobby’s door open. Karmen yells, “Call my dad, Bobby!” and I have to open the door.
She’s not cuffed, but Neighborgall has her elbow. Hinton holds a cardboard box under her arm, and I can see several plastic bags sticking out the top. Evidence.
Neighborgall sees me first. “Go back inside, please.”
Then Karmen sees me and her eyes widen. “Ms. Ray? Ms. Ray. Please! They’re arresting me. They think I killed Professor Trachtenberg. Tell them I didn’t do it.”
“You’re not under arrest,” Hinton says, looking over her at me. “We just want to talk with you at the police station.”
“After you took all my stuff?” Karmen looks like she’s ready to bolt and Neighborgall holds her elbow more tightly. “Ms. Ray, tell them. I wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Neighborgall and Hinton both look at me, whether in warning or curiosity, I can’t tell. I can’t believe the words that come out of my mouth.
“Just go, Karmen. Tell them the truth. You don’t have anything to hide.”
How many times have I heard those words? They seem to comfort Karmen as much as they did me because her face goes dark, her mouth a hard line, and she shakes her head in disgust. At Neighborgall’s prompting, they continue their path down the stairs and to the waiting patrol car.
Cigarette smoke blows in from the doorway beside mine. Bobby spits and steps back inside. Before he shuts the door, he says the first thing I’ve agreed with him on.
“Fucking cops.”
I take a short break midway through the bottle. I’ll call it a nap but all I really do is sit on my hideous sofa and stare at my front door. I’m not looking for anything or at anything; my front door is just the thing that’s easiest to see from where I’m flopped onto my couch. Next door, Bobby comes and goes several times, punctuating his movements with door slams and yelled phone calls. He plays a little death metal at one point but can’t commit to it. Silence wins out in the end.
My glass is empty and the room is getting dark but I don’t move. My stomach growls and I have to pee but I still don’t move. I definitely need to shower and now that my bra has dried, it’s itchy and sticking to my skin, but that has to keep, too. I don’t want to move.
If I move, I may think. It’s like my body stands in a pool and my thoughts are silt around my feet. If I move, I’ll stir them up and I don’t want that.
Someone knocks on the door. It’s not Jeannie. She’d jus
t let herself in. If it’s the cops, they’ll find their way in eventually. Anyone else can go away. But they don’t.
“Anna?” Meredith pushes the door open, peeking her head in and whispering. It takes her a minute to spot me amid the debris and shadows. “Anna, are you okay?”
“Yep.”
She closes the door behind her and picks her way over the clutter to sit beside me on the couch. Her hand is warm on my knee.
“Anna? Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I hope in vain that this is the extent of the conversation. I can do this all night.
“I’m sorry I upset you today. It was thoughtless of me.”
“I’m okay.”
It feels nice where she rubs my knee. “Can I get you anything? Something to eat? Maybe I could run you a bath?”
Air rushes out of my mouth until I catch it and turn it into, “No. Thank you.”
“You know, it might not be true what I heard about the crime scene. It might just be a stupid rumor that someone was spreading. It might just be an exaggeration someone told to make an already awful scene that much worse.” I nod as she talks and focus on the warmth of my knee beneath her hand. She leans in closer and I look up to face her.
Meredith’s eyes get soft as she looks at me—no judgment, no anger, just compassion and worry and friendship. As I watch her expression shift through these soft emotions, I think, she knows. She can see it all right there in my face. I think that she must, that maybe everybody can, but out of some arcane social nicety nobody points it out, nobody calls me on it. Or nobody is looking for it but when they see it, they know me.
It’s impossible to me that only four people who ever walked the face of the earth know the truth about me. Two of them are dead. One of them is in prison. And one of them is about to burst into tears and throw herself into her boss’s arms and beg her to admit that she sees it, that’s it’s not a secret anymore. That I can put it down.
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