Tethered

by Amy MacKinnon

  “Sit,” she said, pointing to the lone stool.

  I did. In a way it was a relief. My grandmother took her place behind me, her fury radiating from her in palpable swells. I heard the boar’s bristles scrape against the apron as she removed the brush from her pocket. She then took the mirror from atop her Bible, thrusting it at me. I held it with both hands, keeping my gaze soft on a point just beyond its frame. If I focused, if I stayed within myself, the tears might come. She started at the crown, pressing the bristles hard against my scalp, and began pulling through, section by section.

  “Your mother must have liked the darkies, just look at this hair. Are you looking?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She tugged with such force I was yanked from the stool. I knew enough to get back on the seat again. It would be over sooner this way. I tried not to notice the burn, the clump of hair drifting to the floor.

  “All these kinks. Can’t imagine why you’d take pride in such a thing.”

  With her right hand she continued to drag the bristles through, and with her left she opened the Bible to her selected passage. I managed to keep my chin aloft as she ripped through another tangle of curls. A prickle came to my eyes; I dared not blink. My grandmother spread the book facedown. There was a certain satisfaction when its spine cracked. She paused to clear the brush. The strands she freed came to rest along my knee, trapped on the hem of my nightgown. For the rest of my time in that chair, they tickled my skin whenever caught in one of the many drafts.

  My grandmother finally set the brush on the table. Though I knew what was waiting for me in her other pocket, I tried to believe the worst was over. But she was standing too still behind me, her breathing agitated. The mirror reflected the rise and fall of her chest, and just above it, her chin and lower lip. Spittle collected in the corners as she spoke. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? We know how much Eve liked her apples. Ran into Dot McGee at the market. She wanted to express her concern for you. Seems she overheard her boy Tom and his friends talking, how you was the football team’s best cheerleader.”

  I watched my grandmother’s hand in the mirror, the way it slid along her navy and white striped apron into that front pocket. How I wanted to look away. “She was just being a good neighbor, she said, didn’t want you to end up like your mother. ‘Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ she said.”

  With her other hand, my grandmother flipped over the Bible. I didn’t see it, just heard the thump when she righted it on the table. Her voice boomed. “A reading from First Corinthians: For if a woman be not covered, let her also be shorn.”

  The scissors, her good sewing pair, caught the light as she held them to my head. The mirror shook as the shears cut. My grandmother’s huffing and the scrape of the scissor’s hinge raked my ears. She started with small fistfuls, but as her rage grew, so did the layers in her hand. All the while I held firmly to that mirror, righting myself onto the stool each time.

  She was only partway done when a cramp dug into her left arm. A lather formed about her mouth as her chest heaved. Before she took her seat at the kitchen table, she handed the scissors to me. “Finish.”

  My grandmother died a few months later; a heart attack killed her the day before my graduation. Her mother’s diamond ring bought me another bus ticket and a few months’ rent before I enrolled in mortuary school. I did the rest. Later, following an apprenticeship at a funeral home, I found my way to Linus. He’s tried to shelter me, find a way around my past, but my grandmother’s legacy is too powerful even for him.

  It was ten years before my hair grew back to its previous length. It will be many more before I forget that night, the odor of cloves, the way my hands shook. What I remember best of all, however, is the calm that descended when I finally put down the shears. How my breathing settled, the tears stopped, how everything stopped when I took hold of the clumps that remained. I stared first at my grandmother cradling her shoulder, turned back to my reflection, and then I began to pull.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Walking through the parking lot, I check between cars, hesitate before taking the outside corner of the bend of the ramp. A light drizzle wets the grime, freshening the odor of waste. My thighs clench as I climb the steep hill up to the Brockton Police Department; it’s located high on a concrete hill, a sentinel overlooking this weary city. Sporadic halogen lamps give off a fuzzy, otherworldly light, the ever-present dust and rain whirling in their glow. There’s a subway stop just a hand’s throw from the main entrance; it’s never seemed queer before tonight. But tonight the familiar has become alien.

  It’s fitting that the sky is obscured, without the moon or stars to light my way. Anything is possible now. A train screams alongside the subway platform across from the police station’s entrance, belching diesel fumes from its gut. In an instant, it devours a stream of people between its snapping doors, as if stealing them away to their final exit. An off-duty cop exits the station and walks toward me, a cell phone tight against his ear, a hat pulled low against the weather. His laughter echoes through the bitter night; he doesn’t know.

  I open the door to the same dingy foyer from this morning, though it seems that was years ago. There are the !WARNING! posters alerting me to real monsters lying in wait. I wonder how long before they hang Linus’s photo alongside these others.

  Alma asked me to pick up Linus. She reminded me of her difficulty driving at night and of her roast in the oven. Both are true; I don’t want to think there’s any other reason.

  The police haven’t charged him, but she said they’ve hired a lawyer nonetheless, someone from Reverend Greene’s congregation. The reverend was able to reach her in North Carolina, where she’s celebrating Christmas with her family. The lawyer said she’d fly home first thing in the morning. It will be pro bono; Linus buried the woman’s fiancé not quite a year ago. He was driving to their rehearsal dinner when an elderly gentleman mistook the gas pedal for the brake. It was whispered throughout the wake that Linus refused payment, that it was his gift to the bride. It would have been the couple’s wedding day.

  There’s no one in the waiting area tonight. The officer now behind the Plexiglas is young and lean, with a boyish smile and a boxer’s nose; I imagine his weekends are filled with frothy women and pickup games of touch football. He’s placing a coffee order with someone beyond my line of vision, “. . . three sugars and milk, and can you get me a chocolate cream-filled?” They make the expected joke about cops and doughnuts, and then he swivels in his chair, his smile disappearing when he sees me.

  “Can I help you?” He looks down at a jumble of papers, his countenance a mask of indifference.

  There’s that stab, a familiar sense of otherness. “I’m here for Linus Bartholomew.”

  He doesn’t look at me, just lifts the receiver and mumbles into the phone. I stand there after he hangs up, waiting for his instructions, but he simply shuffles the papers before him.

  I turn and sit on the edge of a metal chair, alone, invisible again. It’s hard to admit, but I don’t want to be here, to see Linus vulnerable and broken. Thoughts of the days and weeks to come begin to buzz in my head, a prelude to a thickening ache. Though Linus will walk through these doors tonight, I doubt he’ll ever be free again. To be linked to such a crime tars a person forever. I’ll need to find an unknown reserve within myself that will sustain us both.

  I feel in my pockets for a wayward aspirin, anything to quiet the deafening rush of thoughts. There’s a sound on the other side of the wall behind the officer, a familiar voice and Linus’s own low rumble. Then the stairwell door opens and he’s ushered through, Jorge holding it ajar while Linus continues speaking.

  “No, no, I appreciate it.” Linus gestures to me. “Clara’s going to be taking me home now. Thanks anyways.”

  Jorge nods to me as Linus shuffles across the room. He places a hand on my back, an unconscious act of affection on his part. This time I allow it to remain.

  “So I’ll see you ba
ck here at one o’clock tomorrow with your lawyer?” Jorge asks, holding a folder, his expression a mixture of regret and disappointment.

  “Oh, I’ll be here, don’t you worry.” Linus raises a hand over his shoulder; he’s already headed for the exit.

  The drizzle has cleared, though other clouds roll across the skies. Snow? We don’t speak as we walk to the car. He leans on me the entire way; there’s a thin layer of ice in the pockets of blacktop. I imagine both the cold and the sharp incline are difficult on his legs, and, of course, the long, horrible day that’s taxed his whole. I help him into the passenger side of the hearse, then find my keys and turn the ignition. The vents blow full-on, cold at first, the stagnant air tinged with the odors of must and rot, odors familiar to my business. I stop at the light at the bottom of the concrete hill. Once it turns green, I make the left to return to Whitman.

  “Clara,” Linus says, his voice strong, his face obscured by shadows. “Go on ahead and ask. It’s all right, it won’t bother me none.”

  I don’t know if he can see in this dim light, but I shake my head. I think he’s agreed to the silence until he shifts his weight and stares out the window. Shop signs whiz by in a dizzying flash of reds and blues, magnified and blurred by droplets the rain left behind on the windows. Then, “Do you remember the day you came to our door?”

  I continue driving, allowing the darkness to swallow the awkwardness. As he speaks, the timbre of his voice, the smoothness of its tone, lull me.

  “Those were some dark days after Elton died. I prayed, I prayed hard for God to unveil his plan to me, for my purpose to be revealed. Course once you think you know God’s plan, He goes and changes His mind again.”

  Driving under a bridge, its sides crumbling, I see a homeless man propped against an abutment, a shopping carriage stationed next to him overflowing with his life. Ahead is a mattress warehouse, a check-cashing storefront, and the turn toward Whitman.

  “We’ll be home soon,” I say.

  Linus ignores me, his voice humming now, trancelike, and in spite of myself, I’m hypnotized. “I figured since you was an orphan and we was orphan parents, it made sense. Alma and me, we love you like you was our own.”

  I place my hand over his. In spite of the heat that’s blowing strong now, his skin is still frigid. I keep my gaze fixed on the road as I squeeze the meat of his palm. He bends his head to meet my hand and kisses it. I feel it there, something tangible and pure, something I can carry forward with me. I need to believe him, believe in him. I have to try.

  “Alma said she’s making her roast pork.” There’s a catch in his voice before he clears his throat. “Will you come to supper?”

  “I’ll be there,” I say, and then pull my hand free.

  It doesn’t take long to get home. I turn into the back entrance, to the parking lot that stretches between Linus’s house and my cottage. Alma must have heard the car approaching, because all of the lot’s floodlights are on. She’s standing inside their doorway, her hands clasped in front of her. It isn’t possible, it’s probably the fluorescent light that hangs above her, accentuating every furrow and spot, but she appears to have aged a decade since this morning. She hurries outside to help Linus from the car.

  “Look at you, you’ve gone and made my supper late. Now you’re going to have to chew the tenderloin twice.” Her admonishment is belied by an arm she wraps around his waist, the other used to bolster him as he limps away from the car.

  Linus smiles. “Sorry, I got held up.” He stops to look at Alma and she meets his gaze. “I really am sorry, Alma.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, Linus Alvin Bartholomew. Do you hear me? Nothing!” She shakes him a little as she speaks. They pause when they reach their doorway, Alma straightening her back while Linus leans into her.

  “Clara, give us fifteen minutes, would you, dear?” Alma says without turning. “I should have dinner ready by then.”

  “Can I bring anything?” But they don’t hear me and so I make my own way home. It’s a relief to be in my kitchen, walking through my living room and into my bedroom. It’s none of these spaces I seek; they are only the route there. I yank open both doors to my greenhouse and step into its midst. I can feel my skin warm, my brain calm, the flow of my blood pulsating throughout my body slow. I sit in the doorway caught between these two worlds, between the pull of others’ needs and those of my own. I breathe the incense of my garden, several deep breaths are all I remember, and then I’m jarred awake.

  Before my eyes even open, I’m looking to my watch. I must have dozed off and now I’m late for dinner. It’s been nearly half an hour, what must they think? I jerk myself up and find my shoes by the patio door. In my haste I forgo my coat, and outside I’m immediately besieged by a wind that pierces my thin shirt like shrapnel.

  It’s darker than when I was out last. The waxing gibbous moon is still visible, though the skies are heavy with clouds, their indistinct shape and foreboding gray threatening snow all week. The flakes will start any day.

  My head is still dense with sleep, numb and slow. And then I realize what’s different. The floodlights in the parking lot are out. Alma always leaves them on for me. She’s like that. As I make my way to their house, another wind kicks up and blows through me, churning the clouds so that the moon’s light is dimmed. I hear something: footfalls scraping against the bits of sand and rock covering the blacktop. They’re quick and light, gone before I’m even certain that there were footsteps at all.

  I slow, wary of my imagination and of the very real black ice and wayward rocks. I stumble anyway, landing on something hard and full. Another surge of wind pricks me, whipping dirt into my eyes, freeing the moon from its cover, and for an instant I can’t see, blinking away the grit that scratches the delicate surface of my corneas.

  When everything clears, I wish I could return to blindness.

  There’s a mound of clothes, a bundle of some sort, and I think of my dream. I reach out, knowing already that life has changed.

  “Linus?” He’s sprawled on the ground, his knees pulled in close, lying on his right side. I kneel and reach for his throat, needing to feel the pulse of his carotid artery under my fingertips. His eyes are open and I hear him then; his breaths come in quick, raspy succession.

  “Clara?” It’s a gurgle, but it’s life.

  “What happened?” There’s a quaver to my voice and I squash it. My peripheral vision narrows to his face; everything else fades to gray. In the split second between his words and mine, a thousand thoughts cross my mind: Can I lift him? If I’d brought my coat, I could lay it across him. What if I have to press my lips to his, to breathe life into him?

  “I was coming to get you for supper. . . .” He’s overcome by a wheezy cough.

  “Do you have chest pains, Linus? Is it your heart?” I run through the steps from the CPR course I took at Brockton Hospital. I may need to lay him flat on his back, check for a heartbeat, ensure he’s breathing. Three puffs, fifteen chest compressions. Is that right?

  “Clara,” he says. His words are a struggle.

  “Linus, don’t talk. I’m going to shift you, and then run inside and call 911.”

  My hands move to his shoulders, but he grabs my wrist.

  “Wait.” His chest explodes into another bout of coughing and blood erupts from his mouth.

  Without thinking I grab my shirttails, catching the end of my ponytail, and begin to swipe at his face and neck. I roll him onto his back, reaching under both arms to prop him up so he won’t choke, but it’s slick there.

  My fingers are at his neck again, but my hands are too slippery. I rub them on my shirt and feel them smear. Pulling them from the shadows, I hold them to the light that glows from the kitchen window where Alma is standing, stirring at a pot, unaware. My hands are streaked with blood. Too much.

  “Alma!” I don’t want to leave him, but she doesn’t hear me. I scream again, high and jagged. “Alma!”

  The air embeds itself in
to my hair, crystallizing the sweat there. The mucus within and beyond my nostrils hardens as it freezes. The only warmth I have is from Linus’s blood.

  I tear open his wool cardigan and a button catches and skips free across the pavement. His white shirt glows in the refracted light, but there are shadows, too, spreading before my eyes. I press my hand to the ground and feel his life pooling beneath him.

  “Linus, what happened?” I try to remember how many pints a person has, calculate the amount already gone.

  “A man”—he sputters again—“run, Clara.”

  He pushes me away and then collapses. I hesitate, not knowing what to do, but I know I can’t save him alone.

  Before I can get to my feet, I hear him gasp, then dissolve into another wrenching spasm. I race to Alma, to help. As I rip open the storm door and find my footing on the stairs, another fierce wind is roused, whipping my matted hair against my cheek and neck. Though the winter air bellows and keens, still I can hear Linus’s voice carried within it, “Lord, take care of my Clara.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The walls of Ellison Four are beige and blue, designed to soothe the anxieties of loved ones. The lighting strives for subtlety, though the floor is a dizzying scramble of marbled vinyl squares, dribs and drabs of color intended to blend with all manner of bodily fluids. The other oversight is the steady stream of announcements calling for a particular doctor to come decide the fate of a code green or blue.

  I sit with Alma, both of us waiting for the nurses to settle Linus. Though we saw him briefly in the surgical intensive care’s recovery room, he was still on a ventilator and bound to anesthesia’s netherworld.