The Gunners

by Rebecca Kauffman

  There was an outbreak of laughter around the table.

  “Amazing!” Alice exclaimed. She held a small bone at her lips and chewed the last bit of meat from it. “Do you guys remember when we tried to write a book about ourselves when we were little? We all six had a special power.”

  Lynn said, “That’s right! We picked our own power. Mine was mind reading.”

  Alice said, “Mine was something stupid and boring like flying.” She paused, then turned to Mikey. “What was yours?”

  “I can’t remember,” Mikey said.

  Lynn shook her head. “Me either.”

  Sam said, “Mikey, I think you wanted to be invisible.”

  Mikey said, “Really? I thought that was Sally’s.”

  “No, Sam’s right,” said Alice. “That was yours.”

  It was quiet for a bit. Mikey ran his fork over his plate. Invisibility. It had maintained its appeal over all these years. How he would enjoy evaporating himself at will. And it seemed oddly noble at this stage of life.

  Sam said, “Anyhow, that’s all the church gossip I’ve got.”

  Issa said, “Have you always been religious?”

  Sam shook his head. “It was around the time . . . well . . . around the end of high school.” He took a very large bite of lamb, seemingly hopeful that he might evade further questions on this topic.

  Sam had left Lackawanna to work at a Bible camp in Georgia as soon as he had graduated high school, and it occurred to Mikey now that he never knew exactly when, or why, Sam had become religious. There seemed to be a certain level of discomfort surrounding this subject, some element that Sam never wished to disclose.

  Chris turned to Mikey. “What do you do for work?”

  “Maintenance at General Mills,” Mikey said.

  “Fixing up the machinery and stuff?”

  Mikey nodded.

  “You get free cereal?”

  “Dozen boxes at the end of the quarter if sales were good.”

  Seemingly restless at not being at the center of the conversation for even a moment, Alice said, “I love cereal, but I’m lactose intolerant. Sometimes I get a box and just eat it dry by the handful.”

  Issa said, “You don’t like the fake milk? The soy kind?”

  Alice shook her head. “Can’t stand the stuff. It tastes like an unscented candle.”

  “It does, doesn’t it!” Lynn said. She sipped her water. “Alice, are you still doing those events with the women’s rights drives?”

  Alice nodded. “Helped them raise eight grand last year alone. Which reminds me, you guys, freakin’ make sure you’re writing your governors, okay? Wankers are always trying to take us back to the 1950s. State of Texas? Some women have to drive four hundred miles to terminate a pregnancy.” She looked at Sam. “It’s almost that bad in parts of Georgia, too.”

  Sam cut into his lamb and didn’t respond.

  Alice stared at him, her nostrils flaring. “Do not tell me you’re one of them, Sam. Do you know how many women a year die from complications attempting to abort on their own? Because they’re denied adequate care?”

  Sam blinked slowly and finished chewing his lamb. He said, “No, Alice. And I don’t particularly care to know that statistic.”

  Alice dropped her steak knife onto her plate with a noisy clatter. Her eyes were black fire, jaw jutting forward. “You’re probably one of the ones voting to keep Deal the Heel around, aren’t you?”

  Sam said, “Who’s that?”

  Alice threw her hands into the air, face open wide, incredulous. “Nathan Deal? The governor of Georgia? Sam, you know, the state where you live?”

  Mikey said, “Sam, you are not obligated to tell her who you vote for.”

  Sam said, “If it makes you feel better, Alice, I don’t vote. Period.”

  Lynn laughed into her fist. Mikey stared at his lamb and tried not to smile.

  “That’s even worse!” Alice shrieked. “Do you know how many—”

  Lynn was still laughing as she cut Alice off. “Relax, Al, would you please?” Lynn said. “For the record, I agree with you. But can you leave it be? He’s allowed to have his opinions.”

  Alice cracked her neck, then looked around the table. “Oh, what?” she said. “We consider women’s reproductive rights another unsavory topic for dinner conversation, do we? Am I being tacky? Am I a downgrade from you all’s typical Sunday evening company? Is it time for me to take a time-out?”

  Lynn said, “I don’t think that’s necessary. Maybe just a cooldown. Your company is, as always, very . . . exhilarating.”

  “Fair,” Alice said. She pushed at strands of dark hair that had sprung loose from her braid. “But am I exigent? My brother called me that recently. I had to look it up, and when I did it really hurt my feelings.” Alice released a noisy sigh before anyone could respond, and she turned directly to Sam. “You know I love you, right?”

  Sam said, “We’re good, Alice.”

  It was quiet for a bit.

  Alice’s dark eyes were shining with emotion, and several glasses of wine. “I’m serious. You’re my friend since we’re six years old, and I love you even if you don’t drink and you don’t vote. You know that, right? Hell, I don’t exercise and I don’t floss. You know what else I don’t do? Put money in the Salvation Army bucket. Not even at Christmastime. I’m a monster. I’m the Grinch.”

  “We’re good, Alice,” Sam said again.

  Chapter 18

  Alice turned to Lynn. “When’d your finger go missing, by the way?”

  “Let’s see,” Lynn said. “I must’ve misplaced it about . . . nine, ten years ago. Even after I retraced all my steps.”

  Issa patted his breast pocket and said, “I’ve got Lynn’s finger right here, Alice. Take it with me everywhere, like a rabbit’s foot.”

  Alice roared. “You’re gonna give me a hemorrhage! Is that what you get from laughing too hard?” She turned back to Lynn. “You were saying?”

  Lynn looked around the table. “I didn’t tell any of you guys?”

  Mikey said, “I remember you saying you had an injury and that’s why you dropped out of school.”

  Lynn nodded. “Right. It would’ve been my second year of school that my teacher started me training for the senior concerto competition. Winning pianist gets a big grant, performance at Carnegie Hall, yada yada. So I was practicing for that, nine or ten hours a day, often late into the night, sometimes until dawn.”

  Lynn paused and took a sip of water. Under the light of the chandelier, her hair glimmered red and orange and gold and yellow, and shot out dramatically from her small, pale face. Her pupils were practically nonexistent.

  “One night in the practice room,” Lynn continued, “I left for a quick bathroom break. When I came back, I sat down to play. Third movement of the concerto opens with a huge crashing octave in the left hand.” She demonstrated a long stretch from pinky to thumb with her left hand. “And when I brought my hand down, it met a needle that was stuck between the keys.”

  “A needle was stuck in between the piano keys?!” Alice cried. “Oh, no!” She shuddered dramatically, her tongue sticking out one side of her mouth. “That makes my vagina contract and disappear inside itself.”

  Sam said, “Mine, too!”

  Mikey said, “Someone put the needle there? To sabotage you?”

  Issa said, “You can’t know how crazy these conservatory kids are unless you’ve been one.”

  Sam said, “Were you a student there, too?”

  Issa nodded. “Jazz department. Lynn and I didn’t know each other at the time.”

  Alice said, “Did they find out who it was? I’ll kill him. You know it was a guy. A girl would’ve just started a rumor that you were screwing your teacher. Am I wrong?”

  Lynn said, “This was before they had surveillance cam
eras on every hall. Could have been anyone. The students there . . . the competition . . . It wasn’t a friendly place. They never did find out who it was.”

  “So, and your hand?”

  “It wasn’t bad at first,” Lynn said. “It hurt because the needle pierced the skin, but mostly it just freaked me out. I ran back to my dorm room, locked myself in there, didn’t practice for a day or two. Called campus security and my teacher. Tried to get my head on straight. At first it seemed like my hand was going to heal up fine, but a few days later, it got worse. Red. Painful. Turned purple, then almost to black. Numb right at the knuckle. That’s when I went to a doctor.”

  Alice said, “Infection?”

  Mikey said, “Was there something in the needle? Or on it?”

  Lynn nodded. “I bolted from the room that night, and by the time campus security got there to check it out, the needle was gone.”

  “What’d the doctor say?”

  Lynn said, “He did all sorts of tests, trying to figure out the source of the infection. It was clear that it wasn’t just a needle . . . I would have recovered from a pinprick in two days. There was something on it. Someone knew what they were doing, but they never found out who, or what it was.”

  “And that’s when you had your finger removed?”

  Lynn said, “The doctor recommended surgery to remove the finger right away. He said that if he didn’t amputate, there was a very high likelihood that the infection would grow worse, spread quickly. My whole body could go into sepsis. I could die.”

  “So you had it done then?”

  “Nope.” Lynn shook her head. “I walked out of the hospital, went home to my dorm. Decided to wait and see what would happen.”

  Alice stared at her. “At the risk of dying?”

  Lynn nodded. “My thinking at the time was that if I lost a finger, I’d no longer be a pianist, at least not a serious one. Death seemed . . . I know that sounds outrageous. But I didn’t feel like I’d have enough to live for.”

  “Wow,” Alice breathed. “It’s that important to have all ten fingers?”

  “Classical repertoire, yes,” Lynn said. “All the stuff that would win me any awards, get me any big jobs.”

  Alice said, “Damn, that sounds like discrimination. I smell a lawsuit!”

  Lynn laughed. “My doctor thought I was a complete lunatic. He pled with me. Told me it was fifty-fifty that I would live another month if I didn’t take the operation.”

  “So . . . what happened?”

  “In a couple days’ time, it was getting worse, and fast. Spreading. I got a fever.”

  “And he was able to change your mind then? Convinced you to get the surgery?”

  Lynn said, “He didn’t change my mind.”

  “So what did?”

  Lynn said, “I guess I realized I didn’t want to go just yet.” She sipped her water.

  Alice said, “And was it worth it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was life worth living? Worth sticking around for?”

  Lynn said, “There were a few years there where I wasn’t sure.”

  Alice said, “There are times I’m not sure myself. I mean, do the pros really outweigh the cons? Life can be such a patronizing fucker.”

  Sam frowned. “I don’t like to hear you talk like that,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Alice said, waving her hand. “I’m not gonna off myself. Especially not right after Sally. I don’t want my funeral to be sloppy seconds.” She paused. “I’m joking, you guys.”

  Sam said, “I never know when you’re serious. It’s very annoying.” He turned to Lynn. “So when you got the surgery, you were, what, twenty? Twenty-one? Alone in the city?”

  Lynn nodded. “After the surgery they got me on a bunch of hydrocodone for the recovery, and it wasn’t long at all until I was totally hooked. I’d go to doctors all over the city, get them to prescribe me painkillers.”

  “Were you working?”

  “Office temping. I couldn’t hold anything for more than a few weeks. I moved out to Queens when I dropped out of school because I had to leave the dorm and couldn’t afford Manhattan anymore. Eventually . . . well, it didn’t make sense to take the subway forty-five minutes into Manhattan to try and finagle one more scrip out of one more doctor when I could buy smack on the block where I lived for a fraction of the cost. Eventually, I was selling, too, because I couldn’t hold down a job and had no other way to get my fix and scrape enough together for rent.”

  “Jeez,” Mikey said softly. “I had no idea things were so bad, Lynn.”

  “But you still managed to keep in touch with us,” Alice said. “That’s something.”

  Lynn offered a weary, desiccated little smile. “I didn’t have a computer, but I’d go to the public library, an hour-long walk from my apartment. That’s where I’d go to check my email. And managing to crank out a coherent response to you guys . . . Well, it was all a rather painful and extravagant charade.”

  “So when did the two of you meet?” Sam nodded in Issa’s direction.

  “We met in AA in Queens,” Issa said. “I had my own set of problems. Like Lynn, I made it into the conservatory on full scholarship and couldn’t relate to the classmates, most of them rich kids from private schools. I didn’t fit. I graduated but barely, drinking a fifth of rum a day. Eventually moved out to Queens and got a job doing music at a Pentecostal church. Started AA. My second meeting, this one shows up, and I’m like, I know you, but I don’t know why . . . We put it together then: we would’ve crossed paths at the conservatory a hundred times, just hadn’t properly met. Then I found out she was that girl, with the finger. Everyone at school had heard the story. We were all examining pianos top to bottom every time we sat down at a practice room, looking for needles and broken glass and razor blades . . . Even still, I sort of thought it was urban legend, didn’t know it had actually happened. Then she shows me her hand. I tried to get her to come out for coffee with me. Took a good little while to convince her.”

  Lynn said, “They tell you not to start dating someone you meet at AA, and I was trying to follow all the rules.”

  Alice said, “So you guys have been together now, what, eight years?”

  Issa said, “Don’t even bother saying it, Alice, it’s no use . . . I’ve been trying to get Lynn to marry me since our first date.”

  Lynn protested, “Not true.”

  “It absolutely is true,” Issa said to the others.

  Lynn held up her left hand, cheerily wiggling the fingers around the missing one. “Where would you propose putting a ring, anyway?”

  Issa gently pushed a few red curls back from Lynn’s face and leaned over to kiss her cheek. He said, “That’s her favorite excuse.”

  Alice turned to Lynn. “So what’s the problem? What’re you scared of? What’s the worst thing that could happen? You get divorced?” She paused to drink more wine. “Speaking from experience, I can assure you that getting divorced hurts about as much as a beesting.”

  Lynn laughed.

  Sam said, “You guys run the local AA in Jim Thorpe, right?”

  Lynn nodded. “Even in a small town, last place you’d expect, you’ve got loads of people in need of help.” She was quiet for a bit. Then she said, “You guys wouldn’t know this, but I was already using in high school. Before, even. Twelve or thirteen.”

  “We were all drinking by then,” Alice pointed out.

  “Sure,” Lynn said. “But it was different for me. I wanted it more than you guys. I could just tell it was different for me. The pathology. It wasn’t long till I needed it and started looking for harder stuff, too.”

  “Were you using pills when we were in school?” Alice said.

  Lynn nodded. “I was buying from those older guys on the street. You know, the nutter who apparently stabbed his grand
ma, and the other one. They were actually in with some really bad-news guys. Townies. Junkies. Dropouts. They always had stuff on them. I started buying whatever they had, as much as I could afford.”

  “I had no clue,” Mikey said.

  “I know,” Lynn said. She paused to eat a bite of lamb. Then she said, “Sally knew.”

  Sam’s head jerked upright. “Sally knew?”

  Lynn said, “I wasn’t planning on bringing this up, you guys. I know it’s already a sad occasion. But it’s been on my mind . . .” Lynn paused and ran her napkin over her lips. She sighed and pushed red curls back behind her ears. The corners of her mouth drooped. “I think it was my fault, you guys.”

  Sam said, “What was your fault?”

  “Sally leaving us.”

  Alice said, “What do you mean?”

  Lynn said, “I never wanted to tell you guys this because I felt so ghastly about the whole thing.”

  “What happened?” Sam said.

  “A few weeks before Sally left us, she caught me.”

  “Using something?”

  “Buying something. Outside the 7-Eleven. Sally walked out and saw me mid-handover. It had to be obvious. She walked on by in that moment but brought it up with me later that night. She was worried. She knew I wasn’t up to any good, and she knew I was lying when I said it was just cigarettes. Being caught in a lie made me so defensive, scared of getting found out, the rest of you turning on me if you knew . . . I felt cornered. It made me mean.” Lynn shook her head. Her posture had gone so low she sagged in her chair like damp laundry. “I can’t believe I brought her mom into it.”

  Sam said, “What about her mom?”

  “Did you say something about her mom?” Alice asked.

  Lynn nodded. “Something like, You act so naïve, but your own mother’s an alcoholic, you know. You’ve lived with one your whole life. So don’t act like I’m some degenerate. Like I’m some kind of shock to you.” Lynn fanned briskly at her deeply flushed face with all her fingers, as though to cool it. When she spoke again, her voice was thin and watery. “And then I made her promise to keep all of this secret from the rest of you guys. Made her swear. I was mean. Seriously nasty to her. She was scared.”