Me Since You

by Laura Wiess

  “Told you we’d make it,” she says with a cocky smile.

  “Now I can relax,” I say, and, laughing, look both ways and then step into the street, heading straight for the golden arches.

  The Last Friday in March

  8:49 A.M.

  I follow Nadia into McDonald’s.

  Justin and Brett are sprawled at a table by the window, and judging by the crumpled food wrappers, they’ve already had first breakfast. Brett sees us, smiles and waves, but Justin is busy texting and doesn’t look up.

  I smile anyway, just in case he does.

  Brett sends Nadia a mock-chiding, “Hey, you finally made it.”

  “Yeah, lucky you,” she drawls, laughing and flicking back her hair.

  “Hi,” I say, but they’re too busy flirting to notice and Justin is still hunched over his phone, thumbs flying. I clear my throat and shift close enough to see the new pimple forming on the back of his neck. “Um, hi.”

  Still nothing.

  I shoot Nadia a sideways look.

  “So, diner time,” she says brightly. “Are we ready or what?”

  “Yes!” Justin crows, lifting his head in sudden triumph. “Brett, man, it’s on. Shane got the keys! Party at the shore house. Score.” He stands, stretches his meaty arms up over his head and finally notices me. “Hey. How you doing?” Turns to Brett. “Let’s get moving. Fun in the sun, bonfire on the beach tonight. Half the class is heading down there.”

  Brett glances at Nadia. “You good with the shore?”

  “Always,” Nadia says, eyes sparkling.

  “Okay then, let’s—” Justin says.

  “Wait,” I blurt, trying not to panic, and when everyone looks at me, I blush and say, “It’s already, um”—I glance at my watch—“five to nine. Can’t we just go to the diner?”

  “Why?” Justin says, looking at me like I’m an imbecile.

  Why? Because I risked a lot for a chance to hang out with you; am missing a history test; bought a new shirt; spent hours last night waxing, plucking, shaving, whitening, painting my nails, practicing my smile. Because I need you to do what you said you were going to do, what we planned to do, what I’ve been counting on. Because there is no way in hell I can go all the way down the shore, party and still find a way home in time to get to work at three. But all I say is, “Because I’m, uh, hungry.”

  “So get something here and eat it on the way,” Justin says impatiently, falling back a step. “Come on.”

  “Row?” Nadia says, and the question in her gaze is about way more than food.

  You know I can’t, I tell her with a desperate look.

  Brett jingles his car keys, slings an arm around her shoulders and starts steering her toward the door.

  She resists for a moment, glances back at me, pleading, frustrated, and when I don’t move to follow, expecting her to pull away, she mouths, I’m sorry. Don’t be mad, flashes me a lame, apologetic smile and trails Brett out the door.

  Wait . . . what?

  Brett unlocks his car.

  Nadia slides into the front passenger seat.

  “You can’t be serious,” I say to no one, and plop down at the deserted table.

  Justin pauses and glances back. Spots me sitting there, shrugs and lifts a hand. Climbs into the backseat and slams the door.

  I gaze in disbelief at the crumpled, grease-stained napkins and Egg McMuffin wrappers littering the table. Squeezed-out ketchup packets leave bloody smears across the bright laminate and salt is strewn everywhere. It’s wreckage, ruins spread out before me, and when I look up again, the three of them are gone.

  And they left me their garbage.

  I stare at it for a moment, then shove it away across the table. Why should I get stuck cleaning up their mess? I’m not even supposed to be here right now. I’m supposed to be on my way to the diner with my best friend and two cute seniors, one of whom supposedly likes me, talking, laughing and having a blast, because that was the plan.

  That’s what we said we were going to do, and I believed it.

  Stupid.

  I scrub a frustrated hand across my forehead, totally at a loss. Sit back and look around the place. It’s nearly empty, only me and a couple of senior citizens across the room in a booth in the corner.

  Great. Now what?

  Glance at my watch.

  Nine oh one.

  Only six hours to kill till work.

  My stomach growls.

  I dig around in my jeans pocket for my money.

  Two dollars and thirty-eight cents.

  Stupid me again, I actually thought they’d treat us to breakfast.

  Well, at least Brett will still treat Nadia.

  To breakfast, lunch and dinner around the bonfire.

  Right.

  She’s going to owe me big-time for this one.

  I shake my head in disgust and glance out the window, look right at the patrol car pulled up to the curb beside me, at the unsmiling, weary-looking cop staring back, badge number 23, Patrolman Nick Areno, my father, who is talking into his radio mike and motioning for me to come out.

  Shit.

  I gather the garbage, shove it into a can and trudge toward the door.

  The life I touch for good or ill

  will touch another life,

  and that in turn another,

  until who knows where the trembling stops

  or in what far place my touch will be felt.

  —FREDERICK BUECHNER

  The Last Friday in March

  9:26 A.M.

  She’s lying, and he knows it.

  Impatient, he rests his hands on the gun belt at his waist and says, “All right, Rowan, let’s try it again, and this time, how about telling me the truth?” He tempers his voice, keeps it calm and cool to mask his disappointment and stares down at the sixteen-year-old girl sulking on the bed. “How many times have you done this?”

  “I already told you.” She lifts her head, flicks a long strand of hair from her eyes and glares up at him, her dark gaze bitter with all the resentment a thwarted daughter can summon against the father who has ruined her fun. And then she looks past him, making certain the accusation spills over to her mother, too. “Only once. Today.”

  “Only once,” he repeats, and in his measured tone is the same polite disbelief the tired answer Just a coupla beers, Officer always earns. “I see.” He nods, thoughtful. “So if I check your attendance record with the school, they’re going to confirm only one unexcused absence.”

  “Check my attendance record? Oh my God, are you kidding?” She bounds off the bed, an explosion of dramatic outrage, and storms around the cluttered bedroom. “I told you I only cut once! Why can’t you just believe me and let it go already? Why do you always have to make everything into such a big deal? I’m not a criminal, you know!”

  “I know,” he says, resisting the urge to add but this is how it starts and I’m not letting it happen. “You’re too smart to go down that road. And I will believe you, when you tell me the truth.”

  “But, Dad, I swear I didn’t—”

  “Don’t.” He holds up a hand, stopping her. “I get it all day, every day from the general public. I don’t need it here, too.” He only has another minute or two, no more. “I’m not your enemy, Row. Just be honest. Talk to me. How many times have you cut out of school so far this year? Two? Three?”

  “Three? Oh my God, Dad, come on,” she says, but her eyes are too wide, her tone too quick. “You must think I’m a real degenerate.”

  No, he doesn’t, and if he didn’t have to call out on a break and leave his assigned patrol area on the other side of town just to bring her home, if he was free to parent and not police right now, then he would sit on the edge of her bed, not caring if Stripe’s wispy black and gray cat hair clung to his uniform pants, and invite her to sit down next to him like a daughter, not a suspect, and talk.

  If his shift didn’t start with an adrenaline-spiked nightmare of domestic horror, then maybe h
e’d have more patience, but it’s hard to ramp down to teen truancy after being the first car on the scene of this morning’s brutal assault, after following the frantic, sobbing mother into the bedroom to check the vitals of little Carrie Connolly, a limp, unresponsive three-year-old clad only in a pair of pink underpants and suffering a half-dozen savage, crushing head wounds.

  Her eyes were rolled back and her pulse weak. Her skull was misshapen, her blond hair matted, stained a sticky maroon-black from the frenzied blows . . . but it was the position of her body that pierced him, the sight of her chubby, outstretched arm, fingers dug into the rug in a last desperate attempt to escape the attack and . . .

  Crawl under the bed to hide.

  He’d always been calm and capable during crises, trained to keep an emotional distance, remain in control, to assess the situation and do what needed to be done. He did it this time too, swallowed the despair and, with sirens growing closer, surveyed the scene. The bedroom windows were closed and locked, with no signs of forced entry. Blood drenched the pillow and splattered a floppy-eared stuffed rabbit lying nearby. Reeking, urine-soaked Little Princess sheets had been half wrenched off the mattress, leaving it askew, and trailed across the floor next to Carrie’s body.

  Blood on the bedroom doorknob and tracks down the hall to the kitchen.

  The detectives arrived and he briefed them. They split up, questioning the distraught mother and her live-in boyfriend separately. The mother said she’d kissed her sleeping daughter good-bye and left for work. Halfway there she realized she’d forgotten her cell phone and raced home to get it, walking in to find her boyfriend with a blood-smeared arm plunged deep into the kitchen garbage can and the house eerily silent. She’d run into Carrie’s room and found . . . and found . . .

  No, he was not Carrie’s biological father. They’d only been together for five months. He was a laid-off carpet installer who watched Carrie while she worked. No, Carrie wasn’t a chronic bed wetter; she’d actually stopped when she was two years old. This was something new, happening three, maybe four times a week now. Yes, it created stress between her and her boyfriend because for some reason he took it as a personal insult. No, she didn’t understand it either.

  EMS rolled in and moments later, Carrie, her mother and one of the detectives were gone.

  There were bloody prints all over the black plastic kitchen garbage can, a pair of stained men’s slippers and strands of Carrie’s hair on the tack hammer shoved inside.

  And on, and on.

  The lying sack-of-shit boyfriend was read his rights. He was a talker though, wanting them to hear his side and denying ever touching Carrie even as dried blood spatter freckled his T-shirt, his neck, his hairline, and congealed beneath his fingernails. He swore he’d gone into the bedroom to wake her up and found her that way, suggesting she’d probably wet the bed again and tried to crawl out of it, fallen and hit her head on the floor . . .

  Yeah. Six separate, skull-fracturing times, not counting the smashed fingers on the tiny hand she’d lifted to try to shield herself from the blows.

  Right.

  It sickened him, knowing she wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last kid he was too late to save, that this little girl could have been anyone’s little girl, his little girl . . .

  No matter how hard he tried he could never protect them enough.

  He rarely gave voice to how futile it felt sometimes, trying to stop people from destroying themselves or each other, never discussed the most brutal parts of the job with his wife or daughter. No, for that he had his partner, Vinnie, or, more often, just pushed the scenes away into the back of his mind and tried to forget.

  Sometimes when he was tired though, and his defenses were low, the ones he’d failed returned to haunt him: The first person he’d ever lost, a seventeen-year-old car-crash victim hopelessly pinned in the wreck, conscious, mangled and bleeding out, clutching his hand and begging him not to let her die. Even with police, fire rescue, EMS and the Jaws of Life working to free her, they had not been in time.

  The bruised and battered baby with the beseeching blackened eyes, who, despite evidence of chronic abuse, was returned to the parents, and then four days later arrived at the morgue with third-degree burns charring over 90 percent of her body.

  The elderly man on his way to the hospice to sit with his dying wife, driving too slowly for the asshole behind him, who, in a fit of rage, cut him off, stormed his car, grabbed the couple’s blind, arthritic Scottie dog from the seat beside him and threw it into traffic, where it was immediately hit and killed by a car that never even stopped. When he arrived at the scene the old man stood stunned and weeping, the dead dog cradled in his arms, and couldn’t give a detailed description of either vehicle.

  Nineteen years’ worth of senseless tragedies, some more memorable than others.

  He wants to explain this to his daughter, to tell her that if he is sometimes too strict or overprotective it’s because he’s seen what can go wrong, knows that her standard, scoffing Oh, c’mon, Dad, nothing’s gonna happen is sometimes true but other times not, and you don’t get to choose when it fails.

  He wants to talk until her attitude seeps away and she confesses why, when he pulled up to the McDonald’s drive-through earlier for coffee, she was sitting inside, alone and miserable, when she should have been in class.

  But he can’t because his break is over.

  Keying the radio, he says, “Eight oh one central, ten-eight Victory Lane,” calling himself back into service. He glances up, meets his daughter’s stony gaze. “Never mind. I’ll just stop by the school.” Sees the flurry of guilt and panic flash across the face he used to know by heart, and suddenly he would give anything to go back in time, back to the days when she ran to him instead of away, when she would get home from school and skip right out to see him in his wood shop, telling him everything she’d learned while he sanded and stained, smiled and listened. Back to when leaving for work meant kissing both his girls good-bye, a ritual never sacrificed because they were his reason for vigilance on the job, for never getting sloppy or lazy or taking anything for granted, because that was the fastest way to get himself killed.

  Now though, to kiss his daughter good-bye he has to tiptoe in and do it while she’s sleeping, or he can’t do it at all. Those same pink cheeks he kissed a thousand times when she was little are off-limits to him and her mother now, personal, private property reserved for whichever scruffy, slouchy, text-happy slug she was cutting school to see, and it reminds him—

  “Mom,” she wails, abandoning anger for misery. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re gonna let him do this to me!”

  It reminds him that although he’s her father, he’s no longer her hero.

  His wife, Rachel, gives him a commiserating look over the top of their daughter’s head, and he’s about to tell Rowan she’s grounded when his radio squawks and the dispatcher says, “Eight oh one central.”

  He keys the radio. “Eight oh one. Go ahead.”

  “Eight oh one, Victory Bridge, possible ten-ninety-six, man with child climbing over wall.”

  Ten-ninety-six. An emotionally disturbed individual.

  With a kid.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Eight oh one copy.” He turns to leave. “I have to go.”

  “What did they say about the bridge?” his wife says, sounding surprised.

  “What’s a ten-ninety-six?” Rowan says at the same time, her voice bright with undisguised relief at the sudden reprieve.

  “Tell you later,” he says, and in seconds is thundering down the stairs, striding through the living room and kitchen and out the sunporch door to the patrol car he’s left running and parked in the driveway alongside of the house.

  | | |

  At 9:26 that same morning, while Rowan Areno is up in her bedroom being questioned by her father, a husky, twenty-three-year-old man in jeans and a khaki jacket trudges past her house on Victory Lane and up the sidewalk of the Victory Bridge, a r
ural, rarely used overpass stretched high across the busy four-lane highway below.

  The man’s bottom lip is chewed and chapped, his gaze glazed, detached, his hair uncombed and his cheeks rough with stubble, but his hands are scrubbed clean, the nails trimmed painfully short so as not to accidentally scratch the sleeping three-month-old baby, the son he has finally gotten for the weekend and now carries in a sling under his jacket, on his chest, nestled against his heart.

  The boy is his pride, his legacy, the best and only thing he feels he has ever done right.

  And he has failed him.

  He stops and rests his hands on the flat, gritty top of the waist-high cement wall, closes his aching, red-rimmed eyes and, for a moment, turns his face to the early spring sun.

  “Great day, huh?”

  Startled, the man turns to see a kid sauntering up the overpass sidewalk toward him, a tall, wiry teen with sleek black hair pulled back in a ponytail, a smudge of soul patch under his bottom lip and a large, shaggy German shepherd padding along at the end of a leash.

  “She’s friendly,” the kid says with a slight drawl as, fringed tail wagging, the dog stops and sniffs his shoes. “You mind?”

  The man shakes his head but slides protective arms around his son. “Don’t let her jump. I got my kid here.” He turns slightly, allowing the boy a glimpse of the baby’s pink forehead and the wisp of unruly, ginger-brown hair, so like his own, that just won’t stay tucked up under the knitted hat. “Nice dog.”

  “Thanks,” the kid says, reaching down and affectionately rumpling her furry, black and tan head. “She’s a good girl.” The shepherd looks up at him, tongue lolling, and leans her bulk against his leg. “Yeah, I know. We’re going to get you some water.” He glances at the man. “Something’s up with her. She’s been drinking a lot lately. We’re going to the vet’s this afternoon.” A shadow crosses his face. “It’s probably nothing but I don’t want to take the chance, you know? I mean, she was born in an Iraqi war zone. She’s already been through hell.”