A Shot at Us

by Cameron Lowe

  They arrived about twenty minutes later. Hugh checked himself in while Malcolm waited, and a friendly staff member – orderly? Malcolm wondered – came out to escort Hugh into the facility. His brother-in-law turned around once, looking at Malcolm with such pain and sadness that he feared again for him, but then Hugh mouthed the word “niece,” grinned, and Malcolm allowed himself the tiniest sliver of hope that Hugh could come through the tunnel.

  * * *

  From the moment she entered the world, Winnifred Cori Irving wanted to be noticed by everyone.

  First though came the unending days of delay. Their future little wannabe star seemed to be trying to hold on for her uncle to finish rehabilitation. Gwen’s due date flew by, the only birthing pains being those brought on by the strain of lurching around thirty-five pounds heavier than nine months ago.

  Gwen tried every wives’ tale about inducing labor she could find. Three times in the next three days, Malcolm fixed her the spiciest food Gwen could handle, loading down tacos, burritos, and nachos with so much salsa and hot sauce it actually scalded her mouth. Still no baby. Gwen soaked in the tub, meditated, exercised. She and Malcolm made love every night for two weeks before her due date, and since her water still hadn’t broke, twice a day after. Back on a budget again as well as apartment hunting, they couldn’t afford a real pineapple, so Malcolm snuck home a baggie of pineapple chunks from Matto Furio’s for his wife to snack on. Daphne recommended a nice, bumpy car ride, since that was what she believed helped her reach labor with Gwen, but Gwen’s Camry was now running on a prayer and the Mack Machine was starting to already show a little wear and tear, so instead, Gwen tried squatting and bouncing, something Malcolm made the horrible, horrible mistake of laughing at.

  Her doctor planned to induce labor, but just two hours before she was scheduled to go in, Winnifred decided to steal the show for the very first time. Malcolm was Gwen’s first call, but he was further away than Juliet. Ten minutes later, Gwen’s best friend jerked up and into their driveway, and tried not to completely freak out when she guided her very pained friend down the stairs to her car.

  Malcolm waited at the hospital, pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back. When he caught sight of Juliet’s car, he raced towards it, nearly getting his foot run over in the process. Gwen, by that point, was trying very hard to maintain coolness and serenity, and giggled at Malcolm’s worry. That serenity crumbled quickly as her contractions started in earnest, but an epidural helped her Zen make a nice reappearance.

  What they both feared the most was any birth defects Gwen’s medications for her seizures might cause the baby. The couple faced a choice very early on in the pregnancy to keep taking the meds and potentially harm the baby chemically, or not take the meds and potentially harm the baby and Gwen by accidents during one of her absence seizures. They decided to go with their doctor’s advice, backed by a second opinion by a doctor friend of Malcolm’s mom, that they should treat what they could while trying a reduced dosage.

  As it turned out, though, their fears were blessedly, for once, unfounded. When she entered the world, Winnie was just fine apart from a birth mark and a small blotch of eczema. Later in life, they wondered if her food allergies weren’t a byproduct of the meds Gwen was taking, but they had no real idea if the two were connected and it was just speculation.

  From the get-go, Winnie loved attention. She cried incessantly until someone picked her up and led her maternity ward co-conspirators in rallying charges of late-night fussing. She pooped twice the amount their baby book had told them she would, she found the idea of sleep laughable even in those earliest days, and she was forever yakking up something on Gwen and Malcolm.

  And above all else, her parents were madly, deeply in love with her.

  Chapter 29

  Now

  Even the dips in the parking lot were the same.

  Malcolm pulled into the Eagle Nest like they still lived there, and in his mind, he was in his mid-twenties again, coming home to Gwen after his second shift was done, hoping she’d still be up even as he wished she’d get her own sleep.

  The wind ripped at him, tore at the exposed flesh as he made his way around the van, balancing on it for support. His snow boots were threadbare along the heels and the snow crept its way in, melting under his wool socks. Already he knew he’d have a little frostbite. If Gwen was still outside, there was no chance she’d survived. He guessed that was the point.

  Every lump of snow could have been her. He stepped through a massive drift to grab a branch from a dying bush and snapped it off. It was just long enough he could probe the snow, but Malcolm prayed he didn’t find Gwen that way, prodding her freezing corpse with a stick.

  Gwen’s corpse.

  His stomach rose and without warning he puked half a cup of instant coffee all over the sidewalk, his vision blurring from the sudden force of his tears. After he wiped the back of his mouth, he murmured his wife’s name, unaware he was even doing it.

  The sidewalk led around the front of the building to the entrance. He intended on ringing every buzzer at the door. He had no idea if anyone still lived there from the old days. Probably not. Turnover there had been high. He stumbled down the sidewalk, poking the stick gently at the snowy pillows along the way. Bushes, bushes, someone’s bike, a garbage can lid…

  There was something written in the snow.

  Malcolm knelt, digging out his cell phone frantically and powering it back on. He had a few missed messages but he ignored them for the moment as he desperately clicked through to the flashlight app, unsure if it would work with the cracked screen. When it lit up, his heart hammered hard in his chest. The snow and wind had partially obscured what was in the drift, but he could make out the soft edges of a doodle. Two people, one tall, one shorter, and three little ones beside them.

  Gwen.

  She had been here.

  He shot to his feet and raced to the front entrance. A row of buzzers and apartment numbers lined the door. He jabbed at them until someone answered, a deep-throated man who’d clearly been sleeping.

  “Whozzat? Ada?”

  “Listen, I’m looking for my wife-”

  “Fuck off,” the man said, and went silent.

  Malcolm tried buzzing him again but got no further response. No one else was answering. He thought no one would, either, and turned around after he’d pressed the last one to the super’s apartment. Where could he go next? Where would Gwen have gone if she couldn’t get in either? He had no idea.

  “Hello?” a voice spoke over the intercom. Youngish sounding, wary, and feminine.

  Malcolm spun back around. “Hey, hi. I’m looking for my wife, Gwen Irving. She might have come here. It’s an emergency, please, I just… I need help.”

  Silence, and he thought that would be it, that he’d exhausted his last idea, then there came a sigh. “I have a gun. I’m going to come to the door. You can come inside but if you try anything…”

  “Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you, yes, I’ll keep my distance, I’ll do whatever, I just need to speak to someone, anyone.”

  A minute later, a woman in her forties or fifties padded down the hallway in flannel pajamas and a robe. She really did have a gun in her hand, raised just high enough she could bring it up and in his face pretty quickly, but that wasn’t surprising, given the city and the neighborhood. But on the other side of the door, she stared at him, slack-jawed. Why was she so familiar? She hadn’t lived in the building when they did, that was for sure. Someone he knew from the neighborhood, maybe?

  As if she’d come awake, she pointed the gun towards the floor and stepped forward the last few feet quickly to let him in. A confused smile spread across her face. “Malcolm, isn’t that right?” she asked

  He stepped inside, and frowned. “I’m sorry, I should know-”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. We only met for a few hours a long time ago but my memory’s very, very good. I’m Amy Wendell. You helped me move my mom’s stu
ff when she passed away.”

  “Mrs. Sosa,” he said, blinking at the strange coincidence. “Holy crap, you’re the new super? Tonight of all nights… look, I’m sorry, it’s fantastic to see you again, but I’m desperate here.” Quickly he gave her a condensed version of the night’s events and why he thought Gwen might be in the area.

  Amy clapped her free hand over her mouth and quickly dropped it. “There was a phone call from the police department. Someone called in a crazy woman in a hospital gown stumbling around outside. They thought she was drunk or high and they wanted me to make sure the building was locked.”

  “Did they say anything else? Anything about where she might be headed?”

  “Down the street, towards the Town Pump and the basketball court.”

  The Town Pump. The basketball court. Apartments between here and there. His mind ran through the images of a dozen buildings in the area and hit on the answer in a second.

  “And the church,” he breathed.

  * * *

  Gwen bowed her head. Some of the words tumbled out of her, some she only thought. The fever still burned away, but she was at least lucid now, Time to make a decision, and maybe time to say goodbye.

  “I’m so tired, God. I want to see what you’ve got for me for the next fifty years. I want to see my babies grow up. I want to go to bed every night next to the man I love and I want him to be the first person I see in the morning. But I can’t keep doing this to them. My time can be theirs.

  “I don’t know what the answer is. But I know what I can do. I stop fighting this now, and they’ve got a future. It’s… maybe not a happy one, but they’ll have food. Clothes. They’ll get to live, God.”

  She coughed and coughed, bringing up fat wads of phlegm, trying to keep them in the crook of her arm but she had no strength left and her hand fell back to her side.

  “I h-have so many good memories of this place. If I go, it could be a lot worse than here. Thank you for the chance to come back. I miss this street. I miss so much.”

  Her head tilted forward. Gwen was no longer sure she had the energy to stand, let alone walk back out into the cold. Maybe it would just all end right here. That would be okay. Quiet. Warm. It could be worse.

  “Watch over them,” she whispered. “Give them moments of peace and happiness. Help Marley see it’s okay. Help Roslyn keep feeling and loving. Let Winnie bloom. Please God. Please let Malcolm know I love him forever.”

  She closed her eyes, and willed herself to stand up one last time.

  “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go. Please. Give me a sign. Help me know what’s the right way here.”

  Nothing answered her. She nodded, coughed, and reached for the pew in front of her to stand up again if she had the strength. As her fingers brushed the wood, the front door to the place blew open. Footsteps. Gwen didn’t dare turn around. This was some final illusion of her fevered mind. But whatever she told herself this really was, her heart thudded hard in her chest, her soul so glad to hear him

  “Gwen,” Malcolm whispered.

  Chapter 30

  Then

  The seizures came back after Winnie was born.

  It wasn’t really a surprise. Their daughter adamantly stuck to her own sleep schedule no matter how hard her parents tried to get her to rest at night, and when she cried, she cried for the whole world to hear. At first, they tried to split the brunt of the storm, alternating every other night with her. That worked okay, but the walls were so thin it didn’t really matter that one parent separated from the other. Winnie inevitably roused both of them.

  They had to break their rule about going it alone in the world for one reason, and that was the safety of their daughter. While they would have trusted Winnie with Ian or Mrs. Sosa, neither of them were around any longer, leaving them with few options as to a babysitter while they had to work. Daphne volunteered her services, and after their third babysitter turned out to be a drinker, they admitted to her they needed the help. They tried to pay her, but Daphne refused the money every time. Even Elliot, who liked to work as long hours as he could, seemed to come home earlier and earlier when his little granddaughter was around.

  Their search for a new apartment also shot Gwen’s stress right to the moon. Most their options felt like sideways moves as opposed to forward ones. The nicest apartments within their price range had months or even years-long waiting lists. The ones within their price range were seeded throughout similarly bad neighborhoods. One apartment was two doors down from a child molester listed on a national registry. Another was nestled in a housing tract with twenty reported shootings in just under a year. Twenty.

  Then there was Hugh. Almost through his program at the Meier Foundation, Gwen’s brother seemed to be on firmer ground, but Gwen still worried about him incessantly, and always would. They heard from him infrequently, and were allowed to visit to show off Winnie. A long-sleeved shirt covered the scars on his wrist, but at Gwen’s insistence, Hugh showed her the healed tissue, along with his bared armpits. No cutting, Hugh promised her. He cried and cried when he held Winnie, but the grin he gave the parents when his niece waggled an arm and hit his mouth was huge and genuine. Although Hugh would never again seem truly happy, he was far more balanced and open.

  In retrospect, what was the most stressful element to their lives was Gwen’s job, or lack thereof. The Moccasin Twin clinic fired her a month after she returned to work, citing chronic tardiness. Teeth gritted, Gwen explained yet again that she had a baby and sometimes that was necessary, especially as their regular sitter was her mother, and traffic made travel both ways unpredictable and impossible to predict. They didn’t care to listen and she didn’t have the money, desire, or time to fight them on it. Instead, thanks to a tip from Alicia, Gwen found work at an animal shelter. The pay was about the same and the transition seemed so smooth that she and Malcolm barely gave it much thought.

  What they didn’t realize was just how bad her new insurance was. Pharmacies would no longer cover her seizure medication, leaving her to pay hundreds of dollars out of their savings so she could manage until Dr. Ditmore could get her on an alternative medication that was both more affordable and had far more side effects listed in its small print. The insurance covered it, but now Gwen was also buying pills for the endless low-level headaches and nausea the new meds gave her.

  Surprising them both, Malcolm hung tight to his job at Matto Furio’s, even netting a small raise. They kept at the math for a new apartment, and finally found one just twenty dollars north of their budget. During one of Winnie’s blessed naps, they sat down together and reworked the figures.

  “We can’t cut out the phone,” Malcolm said, and Gwen nodded.

  “Electricity’s potentially going to be cheaper but we can’t count on it.”

  “Right.” Malcolm tapped his chin. “Groceries… hmm.”

  “I won’t cut anything Winnie needs.”

  “Agreed. But I can definitely do without beer, and that can help.”

  “Malcolm…”

  “What? It’s not like I need it or anything. Besides, it’s for my wife and Farts Tooterstuff.”

  Gwen sighed. “Okay. Also, we should really stop calling her that before she thinks it’s her name.”

  “Yeah, but… you know, not right now.”

  “No. Next week, maybe. Soon.”

  The object of their discussion mashed her lips together as if in agreement too.

  “Water usage… hmm. We’d have our own washer, which is going to drive up the cost, but-”

  “What are you talking about?” Malcolm asked, pulling her notes to him. He shook his head as he examined them. “No, no no, water’s covered in the other place. Water, sewage, and garbage, so long as we stick to the one bin rule.”

  Gwen glanced up sharply. “Wait, that can’t be right.”

  “I think it is?” Malcolm said, making it more of a question. He stood up and went to grab their phone off its dock on the wall. “Got the number
?”

  Gwen rattled it off, and a few rings later, their potential new landlord confirmed Malcolm was right. Gwen stood up so fast she nearly kicked the chair over. Malcolm grinned at her lopsidedly as she pranced over and embraced him. He hefted her up under her bottom as she planted kiss after kiss on him.

  “We can do this,” she said gleefully in between kisses. “It’s gonna be tighter than shit, but we can do this.”

  “Celebratory crazy sex?”

  “Celebratory crazy sex,” Gwen confirmed, but of course, Winnie woke and had other ideas about how they should spend their time.

  * * *

  The first seizure they noticed came the week after the move. Their new apartment was swanky compared to the low bar set by the Eagle Nest. Two whole bedrooms, a bathroom large enough for both of them to move around, and a kitchen that wasn’t actually part of the living room made them feel practically like royalty. Malcolm knew it wasn’t nearly on the level of the house Gwen had once shared with Calvin, but she never once made that comparison herself.

  There was nothing particularly stressful about that day – at least, no more than usual. When she got off work, Gwen drove to her mom’s, picked up Winnie, and did a little grocery shopping at the dollar store for some essentials since it was payday. Both she and Malcolm liked their frozen vegetables – they were obviously cheap, and the bags were just large enough they had a decent side to go with their strict diet of whatever meat was discounted the lowest that week at the grocery store. This week that had been chicken, so she bought a bag of stir-fry vegetables to make fajitas that night. Along with the tiny tortillas the store sold, she added a couple bags of rice and soy sauce, and some egg noodles to make chicken noodle later that week. Gwen made the mistake of passing through the snack aisle, and reached out for a bag of cheddar potato skins, her favorite from that particular store. But after a moment, her hand faltered and she chose instead a bag of popcorn, Malcolm’s favorite. Winnie, from her little baby papoose, made a raspberry sound, and Gwen laughed softly.