“We should have him arrested,” Tanya says, pulling out her phone. “Like, now.”
Lorraine makes a sharp movement with her head and then winces. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It will only make him angrier.”
“Well, will he leave?” Tanya asks.
Her sister is wearing her coat over her pajamas, but there’s still something professional about the way Tanya looks, leaning forward with her legs crossed, her phone securely in her hand, like a weapon. Nessa feels herself begin to shrink in her younger sister’s presence.
“Leave where?” Lorraine asks.
“The house.”
“He lives there, Tanya.”
Tanya balks. “Well, he needs to get the fuck out. We’re not going home if he’s going to be there.”
“I can’t just kick him out, Tee.”
“Fuck yes, you can. If you don’t want to report it to the police, which, by the way, you absolutely should, you can get a restraining order, in which case he will be legally obligated to leave.”
In the harsh hospital lighting, her mother’s face is washed out, with streaks and crumbles of mascara surrounding her blood-red eyes. “I don’t want to make a scene,” Lorraine says.
“He’s the one who made the scene, Mom,” Tanya cries. “Look at you!”
Lorraine doesn’t respond. The floral rot smell has intensified and Nessa realizes that she’s been holding her breath, trying not to inhale.
“Mom, has this ever happened before?” Nessa asks.
“No,” Lorraine says forcefully. “We got into an argument. It’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated about that?” Tanya points at Lorraine’s neck.
Lorraine lowers her gaze. “I hit him first.”
“I don’t care.” Tanya’s eyes are wild. Something shifted since her sister came back from the bathroom. She has gone from stunned to furious, and Nessa feels a little frightened of Tanya—of what might possibly come out of her mouth. She doesn’t know Tanya in the same way she did when they were younger. Or rather, Tanya doesn’t let herself be known. In moments like these, Tanya goes elsewhere—and Nessa is left guessing and useless.
“He strangled you, Mom,” Tanya says. She looks viciously to Nessa for help, but Nessa feels frozen. She’s experienced this before: paralysis born from shame. That she hadn’t known Jesse was capable of doing this. That she should have known. And even worse: that Jesse was somebody who she trusted. Someone she felt close to, maybe someone she loved. All of it feels unbearable.
“How long has this been going on?” Nessa finally asks, Tanya’s eyes boring into her. Though it doesn’t make sense, Tanya’s rage seems directed at her.
“There is no this, Nessa,” Lorraine says, but she’s still looking at Tanya. “We got into an argument and we both lost control. It happens sometimes.”
“This is more than an argument,” Tanya says. “I can’t believe I’m having to say this to you. You’d be stupid to let him back in the house.”
“Tanya,” Lorraine says. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Talk to you like what?” Tanya bursts back. “Talk to you like I don’t want you to die in your own kitchen? Do you understand how fucked up this is?”
“What was the fight about?” Nessa asks.
“He heard what I said about him,” Lorraine says, her voice breaking—the most emotion she’s shown the entire night. “The thing about the mailman. And your father being confident. I can’t believe I said that, like a fucking idiot, when he was just inside.”
There’s a single knock on the door then, and a doctor wearing a white coat strides in without waiting for a response, a man so thin he’s almost concave. “Lorraine,” he says, his voice deep for how slight he is. He makes his way to their mother’s bed and Nessa and Tanya both roll their stools away to give him room.
“Dr. Reimer. These are my daughters, Nessa and Tanya.”
Dr. Reimer turns his attention briefly to Nessa and Tanya, shaking both their hands before turning back to Lorraine. “How are you feeling?”
Lorraine smiles wryly and Nessa’s stomach churns at the sight of her mother’s braces. “I’ve been better.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about tonight. Would you prefer your daughters to stay here or wait outside?”
Lorraine looks at Nessa and Tanya skeptically. “They can stay.”
Dr. Reimer glances at the electronic chart that is open on a standing computer in a corner of the room, then sits down beside their mother. “Can you tell me the events of what happened this evening?”
“My husband. We got into an argument,” Lorraine starts. She reaches up to touch the top of her head and Nessa notices then how greasy her mother’s hair is. She’s not sure how she missed it before. “He threw a bottle of soap at me. He poured it over me. Then he choked me.”
Nessa feels nauseous. She glances at Tanya, whose face is stripped of emotion. Now that the doctor is in the room, Tanya seems oddly reticent, willing to take a backseat.
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see stars or anything like that?”
Lorraine squints her eyes. “A little, maybe.”
Dr. Reimer nods. “Describe it to me. The stars.”
“In my peripheral vision. Kind of like a head rush. Flashing lights.”
“How does it feel to swallow?”
Lorraine holds a hand to her throat and swallows. “It’s alright. It hurts a little.”
“Any ringing in your ears?”
Lorraine shakes her head.
Dr. Reimer stands. “Look up for me?” he says, and Lorraine cranes her neck. Dr. Reimer examines her, touching her glands. “Any pain?” he asks, and when Lorraine swallows, Nessa can see in her mother’s eyes that he’s hurting her.
“A little,” she says.
“You have subconjunctival hemorrhaging,” he tells her, and when Lorraine looks at him blankly, he says: “The blood vessels in your eyes burst.”
Lorraine looks surprised and glances over at Nessa and Tanya. “They did?”
The doctor nods. He sits down again, beside her, and when he speaks again his voice is softer than before. “Lorraine, I’m wondering if you’d like to speak with a counselor. We can get one here, right now.” He’s asked her this before. It’s clear.
Lorraine shakes her head. “I don’t need a counselor,” she says.
“Excuse me for pushing, Lorraine, but I have to tell you—you do.”
* * *
—
THEY LEAVE THE HOSPITAL an hour later with instructions to rest, and with a phone number for a domestic violence hotline, should Lorraine change her mind.
They don’t speak on the car ride home, though the silence in the car feels different this time: strained. Lorraine and Nessa don’t hold hands. Tanya still speeds, but her turns aren’t as gentle. Nessa rolls down her window and lets her hand surf through the air until Lorraine asks her to close it because she’s cold.
When they pull into the driveway, it’s three a.m. and Jesse’s car isn’t there.
“What if he comes back?” Tanya asks, putting the car in park.
“He won’t,” Lorraine says. “I texted him. He’s going to stay at a friend’s house.”
“And what about tomorrow?” Tanya presses.
Lorraine sighs. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Let’s just go to bed.”
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT NESSA cries as quietly as she can into her pillow. She hates how Tanya had looked at her in the hospital room; how frustrated her sister had seemed at Nessa for not knowing what to say, or for saying the wrong things. Her sister hasn’t come back to bed, and Nessa thinks it must be because Tanya is angry with her.
Nessa
wishes she had never gone on that walk with Jesse. She’s embarrassed by how good it had felt when he complimented her, when he offered to tell Henry to get lost. She’s ashamed that the first feeling she had when Tanya brought up the restraining order was one of loss. That she might never see Jesse again.
But Nessa is frustrated with Tanya, too. It’s easy to peer into other people’s relationships—to make judgments and adjustments—when you have someone who loves you waiting for you at home. Women like Tanya never have to worry about being alone.
Nessa pulls out her phone and composes a text to Henry. I miss you, she writes. She knows she won’t send it, but she lets the words sit there in the outgoing box.
Then, something astonishing happens. An ellipsis appears. Henry is writing her a message. Immediately, Nessa stops crying and waits, her heart pounding. The ellipsis disappears.
She waits up for an entire hour, but his message never comes.
Tanya doesn’t go back to bed that night. She sits on the stairs with her phone in her hand, waiting for Jesse.
A car pulls in front of the house at five a.m. and Tanya stands, her heart doing such violent, out-of-control things, her entire body is palpitating. She holds her phone in one hand and her keys in the other. She took a krav maga class a few years back, and she rehearses the moves in her mind. She remembers the fighting stance, one leg behind the other, the jutting out of her elbow. Jesse wouldn’t hurt her, though. He’s too smart, too calculating to do something that stupid. That was the thing about Jesse that her mother didn’t understand. His outbursts weren’t bursts at all. They were entirely controlled.
She thinks about Eitan and what he would say if he knew she was waiting up to fend off Jesse. She’s sure her husband would have thoughts about it. Let me at least come up and help you, he’d say. But Tanya learned a long time ago that the only person who can really protect her is her.
Jesse stumbles in. He pulls the door shut and then his head snaps up, registering Tanya. He smells like a brewery.
“You can’t stay here,” she says quietly. She doesn’t want to wake up Lorraine or Nessa.
He glances around. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No.”
He sighs. “Tanya.”
She hates it when he says her name. “What?”
“How is she?” His face crumples then, and Tanya sees that he’s been crying, that his eyes are red, his face blotched.
“How the hell do you think?”
He slides to the floor and puts his head in his hands.
“You have thirty seconds to get out,” Tanya says. “If you don’t I’m calling the cops.”
* * *
—
JESSE LEAVES, but Tanya’s heart does not slow. She lies on the couch, clutching the blue throw blanket, her eyes wide-open. Images play through her mind, images she doesn’t want to think about. Things she hasn’t thought about in years. She tries to focus on stupid shit like the color of the walls and the wool of the blanket against her chin and her forearms. She tries to visualize Eitan—his eyes, his nose, his arms—her apartment back in New York. But she keeps seeing the hungry expression on his face as he walked toward her that night, the dim light of the bedroom; space restricting.
Tanya sits up. She goes to the front door and jiggles the doorknob. Locked. This makes no difference, of course; Jesse has a key. Still, it calms her. She goes to the kitchen and flips on the lights; avoids looking at the spot where just a few hours ago Lorraine was sprawled on the floor. Opening the refrigerator and the freezer, she surveys its innards. Processed foods, take-out containers, frozen dinners. Dismal but unsurprising.
She settles on an apple with peanut butter. Her mother buys Skippy, Super Chunk. The kind a child would choose. Then again, she reasons, it could be Jesse’s. As she eats, early morning sun drifts in through the windows in soft, warm patches. She thinks of the light in her mother’s room upstairs and wonders what Lorraine’s face will look like that morning—whether it will have changed shape and color with the passing hours.
Tanya’s crunching and the hum of the refrigerator are the only noises in the house. The quiet here, in comparison to the city, is unsettling. Downright frightening. Tanya wonders how she handled it as a child, all those hours at night of uninterrupted silence. She had Nessa, though, right above her in the top bunk. Breathing and sighing and murmuring. That was the thing about sharing a room with a sister. It was never actually silent. Sometimes Tanya could practically hear her sister think.
She finishes her apple and goes upstairs to find her running clothes. Upstairs Nessa is asleep. The shades are drawn and their bedroom is a soft sapphire blue, the same blue morning light from girlhood.
Nessa stirs on her side of the room. When they were teenagers they’d disassembled their bunk bed and put each bed against opposite walls. “What time is it?” she asks.
“Early,” Tanya says, as she rummages through her suitcase. “Go back to sleep.”
Nessa turns over, pulling the covers with her.
Downstairs Tanya sits on the bottom step and ties her running shoes. He appears again in her mind. Not just his face but his entire body. And this time she can smell him. Smoky, washed hastily, but underneath, something putrid, like ham gone bad. Tanya jumps up, pressing her palms to her eyes, and shakes her head as if to shake away the thoughts.
She runs outside and immediately she feels better, out of that stifling house. The day has hardly begun—the sun low in the sky, the homes on Winter Street quiet and still with sleep. Tanya takes off in the direction of Mass Ave., past the empty tennis courts and playground on the school grounds, past the school itself, which is reassuring to Tanya—it always has been—even when the attending students had behavioral problems and she could hear them yelling all the way from her house.
The closer she gets to Mass Ave., the nicer the houses become. A number of the homes from her childhood have been knocked down and replaced with bigger, more modern versions. She reaches Mass Ave., the artery that runs all the way from Boston out to the suburbs. If she were to turn left on Mass Ave., pretty soon she would reach North Cambridge—gritty and not much to look at, perpetually noisy with the stop and start of traffic, the feeling of being both populated and abandoned—before moving deeper in where eventually Cambridge becomes lush with brick and ivy, bridges over the Charles, crawling with students. That little cushion of Crimson safety.
And then there’s Central Square. When she thinks of Central Square, she thinks of an exposed scar, how it grows darker and uglier in sunlight. She avoids Central whenever possible.
Tanya turns right, runs in the direction of Arlington Center, and beyond that, the wealthier suburbs—Lexington and Concord. Hometown of the Revolution. Spacious houses with nice yards, the best public schools in the state. She pictures her father and Simone and Ben, still asleep in their big, quiet bedrooms in Lexington.
Tanya picks up speed, runs past the bus stop and a row of mailboxes and a teenage boy, high out of his mind. Pretty soon all of it bleeds together. The world’s a blur, and Tanya’s breathing steadies.
Nessa wakes to find Tanya is out and Jesse hasn’t come home. She borrows her mother’s car. She doesn’t know the exact address, but she knows it’s on Inman in Central Square. Once she finds the street, Dan’s house is easier to locate than she thought it would be. It’s quick, too, only a twenty-minute drive. She takes Mass Ave., passing Porter Square then Harvard Square, driving farther into the city. It’s alarming, how close he was to them all those years. She wonders, with horror, if she’s ever passed him on the street or been on the same subway car with him without realizing. And if she were to see him now, she wonders, would she recognize him?
She’s drawn there, it seems, by some force outside of herself. Once she arrives, she sits parked across the street, staring. The Christmas-striped couch is still on the porch and there’s one car in the driveway, a sil
ver Honda, splattered with dirt, Rhode Island license plates.
Time has a way of warping dimensions. The duplex is smaller than she remembered it and closer to the street. The tiny lawn out front is no more than a narrow strip, a bit like their own, but it’s a vibrant green—cared for. The entire property is neater and healthier than it is in her memory, almost as though the house itself has gotten a haircut, lost some weight. It occurs to Nessa that Dan might no longer live there, though she can’t imagine somebody new choosing to keep that damp, weathered couch on the front porch.
It’s the first and only time she’s been back since that night fourteen years ago with Tanya, and she doesn’t know why she’s here, except that last night, after they got home from the hospital, she dreamt of him for the first time in years. She fell asleep thinking about Jesse and woke up thinking about Dan. Somehow the two meshed into one. Even in her dream, they were interchangeable, one turning into the other, again and again. In the dream it seemed logical, the way things do in dreams. She didn’t question it. When she woke up, it seemed to her a sort of answer or clue.
Something is happening inside Nessa. She’s sweating and her stomach is making noises. It’s guilt, she realizes; she’s steeping in it. She imagines him inside, slumped in the La-Z-Boy, head back, feet up, unsuspecting. She wonders what Tanya would think if she knew Nessa was here. If Tanya would hate her for coming here, or if she would understand completely. She wonders if Tanya dreams of Dan, too. Nessa would never ask her. Even the thought of such a question makes her weak with shame—but still, Nessa wonders.
Nessa stays parked there for fifteen minutes, watching the duplex for signs of life. It remains still enough to be a photograph.
1999
Nessa was about to turn thirteen when her father moved out of 12 Winter Street. Their home, which had always felt like a nest to Nessa, in the nonnegotiable way it held her and her family, suddenly seemed flimsy and unreliable. Certain things that had always been there took on a new meaning. For example, the small swamp out back.
Something Wild Page 5
