I heard the sound of respirators and saw yellow and green winking lights atop equipment bursting with round dials and clear tubing that passed through black-pleated bags that inflated and fell like a bellows. And then I saw even more men and women gathered around a central counter, clamoring with one another, shuffling clipboards and shuttling bags of medicine and blood back and forth, anxious to go, their feet moving in place. Along both walls there were curtained stalls, some with lights glowing behind them and darkness behind others.
Steve’s behind one of those, I told myself. I felt a twinge in my chest.
“This is recovery?” I asked, searching the few open stalls, hoping to see something familiar, something that told me Steve was alive in there. His shoes, maybe, or socks? But I only saw gurneys holding legs and feet that I didn’t recognize. “He’d hate it if his feet were sticking out like that—especially if they’re uncovered.” I wasn’t sure why I told the doctor that, but it was true. Steve hated it when his feet were uncovered.
“I would too,” she said, smiling. “And yes, this is recovery. Would you like to see your husband?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, very much.”
“Okay, but we’ll want you to keep it short. He’s awake, very groggy, but he has been asking for you.”
“You said Steve would make a good recovery,” I began. “You didn’t say a full recovery.”
She paused in front of one stall. The curtain was closed, but the faint light of machines bled through. “You have a very strong husband and I expect he’ll do well.”
“What is it?” I asked, wanting to scream: exhaustion was getting to me. The doctor raised her hand, trying to calm me.
“Your husband was shot twice,” she answered, pointing to her side. “The first bullet entered his side. It hit a rib, which probably saved his life.”
“And?” I asked, impatiently. “The other bullet?”
“The second bullet entered here,” she said, pointing to her thigh. “The injury to his leg was substantial.”
“How substantial?” I asked, hating that my voice shook.
She cocked her head, her lips becoming thin, and answered in a voice that sounded less confident. “Depending on his recovery, he may never regain the full use of his leg.” Images flared in my mind of Steve wearing a brace that wrapped his thigh and knee and ankle in long, steely bands pinched together with knobby bolts.
“How bad?” I asked. A tear pricked my eye and emotion stuck in my throat. “Will he be able to walk his little girl down the aisle?” The doctor offered her arm and let me lean on it to steady the shaking.
“Yes,” she said, her smile promising. “And he’ll be able to dance with his daughter too.”
“I’m so sorry for crying again,” I said, but she waved it off. “Can I see him?”
“Shhh,” she told me. “We’re in the no-apology zone. You can cry and say anything you want back here.”
I laughed at that, my nose runny as I swiped at it impatiently. “Might need some more tissues.”
“Yes, we’ve got plenty of those,” she answered, her accent sounding stronger the more we talked. “Here he is. We just removed the respirator, so his voice is going to be a little hoarse.”
She pulled the curtain back, sliding it on rings above us. I cringed at the scraping sound—like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I let out a soft gasp, stepping back unintentionally. The sight behind the curtain briefly overwhelmed me—needly eyes pierced the dark, and tubes ran back and forth, hanging from bags filled with clear and yellow and wine-red fluids. But then I saw what I needed to see and everything else faded into the background. I saw my husband’s outstretched hand, fingers moving, motioning to me. I followed his arm past the snaking myriad of hospital tape, over the thin fabric of his gown, and to his eyes. He warmed me with a tired smile. I shook my head, collapsing at his hand, taking his into mine, bringing it to my face.
“Babe, what did you do?”
“Come here,” he begged. I heard the rings sliding on metal as the light from the main room vanished behind the curtain. “Come on up here.”
“Do you think it’s okay?” I asked, unsure of what to do but knowing what I wanted to do. I moved without waiting for him to answer—quietly, safely, taking care not to crimp a hose or pull on a wire. When I found his face with mine, our lips touched. I wanted to yell at him, tell him how scared I was, but I said nothing.
He looked at me then like he had on the night we met—as if I were the only woman he’d ever seen. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, taking me back to that evening. And like before, the moment lifted me. I hated him for making me love him so much. “How about a dance to some country music?”
“I’ll lead,” I joked. Wet cut into my eyes and his face blurred. “On account you’ll be hobbling awhile.”
“Long road,” he said, agreeing. He strained his neck to see the cushions of bandages around his right leg. “Come up closer.”
“At least we have a road,” I told him, tapping my open hand on his face, shaking my head, showing him how angry I was. “I need you, Steve. I need you with me.”
I glanced beneath the paisley curtain to see if we were alone. Shadows moved, hovered, and moved on. We were alone. I crawled farther onto the hospital bed, careful not to set off one of the machines. I laid my hand on his chest. The smell of antiseptic and bandages made my nose twitch, but I found Steve in there too. I snuggled against him. His chest rose and fell, a steady tempo to close my eyes to. I draped my arm around him, joining the rhythm of his breathing.
“I love you, babe,” I told him, sounding terrified. Sounding resentful. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this again.”
“I know,” he answered grimly. “Amy, I think I’m done.” He began to cry then, a painful, quiet sob.
“We’ll figure it out,” I told him as I dried his eyes.
THIRTY-SIX
I DIDN’T KNOW the time—or the day—when I finally made it back to my mother’s house. The minutes had become hours and the hours begat an entire day. All of it a blur. The sky hinted to me that it was the afternoon—lunchtime—the smells of steamy salted water and macaroni and cheese came to me when I entered my mother’s kitchen. I said nothing, just put my arms around my kids, kissing their heads and cheeks and necks until they couldn’t take it anymore. I assured them with my smile that everything would be okay.
“Oh, thank God,” I heard my mother say. “We hadn’t heard anything and I wasn’t sure what was going on.”
“He’s good,” I said, turning to give my mother a short hug. As expected, it stayed thankfully brief. I knelt at the small kitchen table, bracing Michael’s shoulder. His eyes filled with questions. “Daddy is going to be fine.”
“He’s okay?” Michael asked. “All okay or just some okay?”
I squeezed my lips tight, wondering how much to share. “Your daddy was shot. . . twice.”
“How . . . how bad is it?” Michael asked, his chin quivering.
“One bullet here,” I said, tapping the side of Michael’s chest. “But that bullet hit his rib and didn’t do anything bad.”
“And the other one?”
“Where’s Daddy?” Snacks interrupted. Her words sounded wet and sloshy; she was busy scooping mac and cheese onto her spoon. “Momma, where’s Daddy at?”
“He’s been shot, you dope!” Michael yelled.
“Hey now,” my mother said, rubbing his shoulders. But he was hurting, I could see it in his face. He slid his chair back from the table just far enough to escape, and ran off into the other room.
“What?” I asked, raising my hands to my face, feeling an exhausted flush.
“It’s a lot, Amy. Nothing you did,” I heard Mom say.
“I know,” I answered from the side of my mouth, lying. How could I know? Steve had never been shot before. I put my hand to Snacks’s back, rubbing her little warm body until I got the smile I needed. She’d already forgotten what she asked. She lifted her nearly empty bowl and asked for mo
re, showing us a sloppy grin.
“Go talk to him,” Mom instructed. “Go see your son. Snacks will help me clean up in here. Maybe do some more drawing too.”
“Drawing, you say?” I repeated, lifting my voice in surprise. Snacks nodded. “Thank you, Mom.” And before I left to see Michael, I did something that was unexpected: I hugged her again.
“Now, now,” she said, confronting me. And as she patted my arm and said soft, quiet words, it seemed as though all the years of fighting fell out of us, disappearing from who we were.
I went to Michael, clearing my damp eyes as I entered the room. Crouched in a ball, he was sitting as far back in my father’s old chair as he could. Michael was hiding behind the old Robinson Crusoe book, but he peered up as I approached.
“You’re a fast reader,” I told him, seeing that he already managed to read a third of the book. “A lot faster than me.”
“It’s an easy read,” he said plainly, making me laugh. “It’s a fourth-grader’s book.”
I could hear the defensiveness in his tone. He needed to be angry at someone for what happened to his father, and that was okay. I could be that person for him if I had to be.
“Daddy is going to be okay,” I said, tilting the book away from his face so that he could see me. I stared into his eyes. Teary streaks claimed his cheeks, and I quickly wiped one away. The book fell from the chair, and Michael was in my arms before I could say another word.
“It’s my fault,” he confessed.
“What? Why would you say that?” I asked, shaking my head.
“’Cause! I’m always telling him how cool I think it is that he’s a detective. You know—a cop!”
I pushed his shoulders around until we were face-to-face, and said, “Your father was a cop long before you and Snacks came along. Understand?” He lightly bumped his head against mine, trying to nod.
“I understand,” he said as a loud, clamoring noise erupted from the kitchen. The sound of a pan spiraling like a coin, teetering on the kitchen’s hard floor.
“Mom!”
Silence.
Snacks’s giggly laughter.
I stood up and began making my way toward the kitchen, but I stopped in the dining room when my mom spoke out.
“We’re fine in here. Snacks dropped the pan is all.”
“Okay,” I answered as I braced my hand on one of the moving boxes along the wall. A tangle of leather and buckles filled the box. And on the top of the snake pile, I found the belt and buckle I had set aside just before receiving the call from Charlie. I peered over at Michael. He’d found his way back to the pages of Robinson Crusoe. The kitchen was silent again, save for the patter and shuffle of tiny feet—Snacks running around, playing.
My fingers twitched. I tried to swallow, tried to lick my dry lips as I carefully touched the belt buckle. The metal was cold but it burned my fingers as I traced the wings.
How many men?
At once, I could see all of them. It was as if some magical barricade had been lifted from my mind. There hadn’t been just one or two. I saw a dozen faces, maybe two dozen. I wanted to pull my hand from the moving box, but I couldn’t force myself. I grabbed the belt, whipping it out of the thick cardboard box. I wrapped the leather around my fist. The leathery smell and creak of it brought even more faces to my mind. Men of all shapes and sizes, men of all different ages. They had come to our station wagon, seduced by my mother’s promise for sex like sailors following the alluring call of a mythical siren on a dangerous ocean reef.
And then I relived the travels between towns and mountains, the endless stretches of single-lane roads. I saw the darkest passes, lit only by our headlights. I saw faraway stars—tiny pins of light peering down, judging us. When we were far enough from a truck stop, we’d pull over on some obscure, desolate back road where nobody ever came. She’d open the car door and the taste of road dust would fill my mouth. She’d motion for me to take the man’s feet. I’d get out, taking hold of cold ankles, dead skin always feeling like paper. My mother would push as I pulled, dragging him from the car. Some of the men slid off the front seat easily while others got stuck and made noises, cracking as if their bones were breaking. We’d roll the dead men off the edge of the road, off the edge of nowhere. Then we’d go home.
Rigor mortis, I said to myself, finally understanding what the sounds were. I remembered thinking that their ghosts were trying to talk to me, threatening to haunt me for what I’d done.
My mind began to swim with the understanding that I’d been a murderer all of my life. The homeless man hadn’t been my first after all.
Just how many had there been!?
Snacks ran from the kitchen, playing chase with her grandma, laughing hysterically before tumbling hard into my legs. I threw my hands into the air, jumping with a screech. She laughed harder and then motioned to me as if she had a secret to share. Instinctively, I bent over, closer to her, the smell of macaroni and cheese rising to my nose. My baby girl raised one hand and pressed a finger to her lips.
“Shush,” she teased. I stumbled backward at the sight, falling to my bottom. Michael came to help me just as my mother caught up to Snacks. I watched, frozen, as my daughter turned to my mother, and they both motioned to one another with their fingers pressed over their lips.
Shush.
I saw my nightmare, my mother looking at me from the front seat of our old car, her finger pressed against her lips, motioning for me to kill her lover. I screamed. Michael shook me, trying to wake me from the horror. He jolted me into knowing the truth of what I had been reliving at night.
“You taught me this!” I screamed, getting back to my feet, shaking the belt at my mother.
Snacks ran back to me. “Shush,” she repeated.
My insides burst with revulsion and then rage. I threw my hand high above my head, the leather belt wrapped around my fist, threatening to strike my baby.
“Mom!” Michael screamed, jumping between us, blocking me. His eyes were filled with terror. “What are you doing?”
Every part of me began to crumble, to collapse, to dissolve into a maddening decay of horrific memories. And now I had brought that all upon Snacks and Michael. In all my life, I’d never struck my babies, never even considered it.
“Oh my God!” I cried as I pulled my arms down to my sides.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Michael begged, staring with eyes wide, guarding his baby sister against my assault.
“Michael! Hurry! Get your things. Get everything. We’re leaving. Now!”
“Amy . . .” My mother tried to console me, coming to me with her arms raised. “I did it for you. All of them. They were for you.” Her face wore a pitiful expression, pleading for forgiveness. But then I saw a change in her eyes as her lips thinned into a sneer. She became the woman from the car, the woman who murdered those men.
“You’re a fucking crazy woman,” I screamed at her. “How . . . how could you teach me to do those things? I was only seven!” Michael was back at my side, crying, his face lit up with fear, reflecting the sudden chaos that had filled my mother’s home. He had no idea why we were fighting. He had no idea why I’d almost struck his baby sister.
I soon had Snacks in my arms. I ran to the door with Michael clutching my shirt, pulling on it as he stumbled but kept pace. I glanced at the empty walls, at the stacks of moving boxes, passing them to leave the home I’d been raised in. And I was leaving the woman who’d brought me into her world of murder, making me a part of it, turning me.
“Amy!” my mother yelled with insistence and urgency in her tone. I passed Snacks to Michael and told him to go to the car.
“Get in the car and lock the doors!” I instructed. “And don’t unlock the door for anyone but me.”
Michael said nothing, just swiped at his face to clear his eyes. He picked up Snacks and then ran to the car.
“Amy, look at me!”
I still held the belt. I squeezed my hand into a tight fist. The old leather sang
to me a nursery rhyme of pitchy creaks. “What?” I asked, turning around.
My mother held her finger to her lips and teased: “Shush.” But unlike in my nightmares, this time she laughed. I took the belt into both of my hands, wanting to do to her what she had me do to all those men. But then she said something that stopped me cold.
“Amy, I only did it because you told me to.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
I RAN FROM my mother’s house, tears distorting and stretching the view in front of me. Michael opened the car door and I tumbled inside, hugging the steering wheel as I searched for my keys. Michael was at my side, fishing out the car’s ignition key from the jumble on the ring when I heard my mother’s laughter. She’d come to the doorway. She was staring out at us, a small, insignificant family on the run from the monster-maker she was. At least, I thought that’s who we were running from. I did those things.
Was I running from the memory? Was I running from what I’d become?
“Amy, you come back when you’ve found your senses,” she hollered after me. Her tone was motherly, even grandmotherly—as if nothing had ever happened. And maybe in her sick, twisted mind, nothing had been wrong with killing all those men. “I’ll send you a letter with my new address. And you can keep that trophy. I’ve got more.” I peered down at my hand. The belt was looped into a noose, and the ends of it wrapped around my knuckles like a kerchief the buckle draped, hanging, swaying back and forth. I threw the belt to the floor of the car, the ghost of men trapped in the noose haunting me.
Please just let me get the car moving, I begged myself. Get the kids home.
“What’s going on, Mom?” Michael asked, the terror still on his face, his cheeks stained with fresh tears. “Why are you and Grandma fighting? Is it Dad?”
“Oh baby, your daddy is fine,” I assured him. “This is an old fight. A very old fight.” When the car’s steering wheel was firmly in my hands, I dared one last look at the house I’d grown up in. In a flash, images came to me of my mother and I leaving. My small hand in hers, leading me down the path to our old station wagon. The sky covered in a soft pink blanket and the sun piercing red on the horizon.
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