by A. J. Finn
I scream.
I hear voices rumble, watch as a scrimmage of shadows crowds through that distant door, lunges toward me, bounding in impossible strides across the endless, endless room.
I scream again. The shadows scatter in a flock, flare around my bed.
“Help,” I plead, with the last gasp of air in my body.
Then a needle slips into my arm. It’s deftly done—I hardly feel a thing.
A wave rolls above me, soundless and smooth. I’m floating, suspended, in some radiant abyss, deep, cool. Words dart around me like fish.
“Coming back now,” someone murmurs.
“. . . stable,” says someone else.
And then, clearly, as though I’ve just surfaced, just drained water from my ear: “Just in time.”
I swivel my head. It bobs lazily against the pillow.
“I was about to leave.”
Now I see him, or most of him—it takes me a moment to scan him from one side to the other, because I’m high on drugs (I know enough to know that) and because he’s holy-shit vast, a mountain of a man: blue-black skin, boulder shoulders, a broad range of chest, a scrub of thick dark hair. His suit clings to him with a sort of desperation, unequal to the task but trying its damnedest.
“Hello there,” he says, his voice sweet and low. “I’m Detective Little.”
I blink. At his elbow—practically on his elbow—hovers a pigeon of a woman in a yellow nurse’s smock.
“Can you understand what we’re saying?” she asks.
I blink again, then nod. I feel the air shift around me, like it’s almost viscous, like I’m still underwater.
“This is Morningside,” the nurse explains. “The police have been waiting for you to come around all morning.” The way you’d chide someone for failing to answer the doorbell.
“What’s your name? Can you tell us your name?” asks Detective Little.
I open my mouth, squeak. My throat has gone dry. I feel as if I’ve just coughed up a puff of dust.
The nurse rounds the bed, zeroes in on the side table. I follow her, my head slowly revolving, and watch as she places a cup in my hands. I sip. Tepid water. “You’re under sedation,” she tells me, almost apologetic now. “You were fussing a little bit earlier.”
The detective’s question hangs in the air, unanswered. I turn my eyes back to Mount Little.
“Anna,” I say, the syllables stumbling in my mouth, as though my tongue is a speed bump. What the hell did they pump into me?
“You got a last name, Anna?” he asks.
I take another sip. “Fox.” It sounds elongated in my ears.
“Uh-huh.” He tugs a notepad from his breast pocket, eyes it. “And can you tell me where you live?”
I recite my address.
Little, nodding: “Do you know where you were picked up last night, Ms. Fox?”
“Doctor,” I say.
The nurse twitches beside me. “The doctor will be here soon.”
“No.” Shaking my head. “I’m a doctor.”
Little stares at me.
“I’m Dr. Fox.”
A smile breaks like dawn across his face. His teeth are almost phosphorescently white. “Doctor Fox,” he continues, tapping the pad with his finger. “Do you know where they picked you up last night?”
I sip my water, study him. The nurse flutters near me. “Who?” I say. That’s right: I’ll ask questions, too. I’ll slur them, at any rate.
“The EMTs.” Then, before I can reply: “They picked you up in Hanover Park. You were unconscious.”
“Unconscious,” echoes the nurse, in case I missed it the first time.
“You’d placed a phone call a little after ten thirty. They found you in your bathrobe with this in your pocket.” He unfolds one massive hand, and I see the house key glinting in his palm. “And this beside you.” Across his knees he lays my umbrella, its body cinched.
It starts somewhere in my gut, then rushes past my lungs, across my heart, into my throat, shreds itself against my teeth:
Jane.
“What’s that?” Little is frowning at me.
“Jane,” I repeat.
The nurse looks at Little. “She said ‘Jane,’” she translates, ever helpful.
“My neighbor. I saw her get stabbed.” It takes an ice age, the words thawing in my mouth before I can spit them out.
“Yes. I heard the 911 call,” Little tells me.
911. That’s right: that southern dispatcher. And then the trek out the side door, into the park, the branches shifting overhead, the lights swirling like some unholy potion in the bowl of the umbrella. My vision swims. I breathe hard.
“Try to stay calm,” the nurse orders me.
I breathe again, choke.
“Easy,” frets the nurse. I lock eyes with Little.
“She’s okay,” he says.
I bleat at him, wheeze at him, lift my head from the pillow, neck straining, drag shallow breaths through my mouth. And with my lungs shrinking, I bristle—how would he know how I am? He’s a cop I’ve just met. A cop—have I ever even met a cop before? The odd traffic ticket, I suppose.
The light strobes before my eyes, faintly, tiger stripes of dark clawed across my vision. His own eyes never leave mine, even as my gaze climbs his face and slips, like a struggling hiker. His pupils are almost absurdly huge. His lips are full, kind.
And as I stare at Little, as my fingers rake the blankets, I find my body relaxing, my chest expanding, my vision clearing. Whatever they put into me has won. I am indeed okay.
“She’s okay,” Little says again. The nurse pats my knuckles. Good girl.
I roll my head back, close my eyes. I feel exhausted. I feel embalmed.
“My neighbor was stabbed,” I whisper. “Her name is Jane Russell.”
I hear Little’s chair complain as he leans toward me. “Did you see who attacked her?”
“No.” I work my eyelids open, like rusty garage doors. Little is hunched over his notepad, his brow grooved with wrinkles. He frowns and nods at the same time. Mixed messages.
“But you saw her bleeding?”
“Yes.” I wish I’d stop slurring. I wish he’d stop interrogating me.
“Had you been drinking?”
A lot. “A little,” I admit. “But that’s . . .” I inhale, and now I feel fresh panic volt through me. “You need to help her. She’s—she could be dead.”
“I’ll get the doctor,” says the nurse, moving toward the door.
As she leaves, Little nods again. “Do you know who would want to hurt your neighbor?”
I swallow. “Her husband.”
He nods some more, frowns some more, shakes his wrist, flips the notepad shut. “Here’s the thing, Anna Fox,” he says, suddenly brisk, all business. “I went to visit the Russells this morning.”
“Is she okay?”
“I’d like you to go back with me to make a statement.”
The doctor is a youngish Hispanic woman so beautiful that I lose my breath again, although that isn’t why she injects me with lorazepam.
“Is there anyone we should contact for you?” she asks.
I’m about to give Ed’s name, then check myself. No point. “No point,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“No one,” I tell her. “I don’t have— I’m fine.” Carefully sculpting each word, as though it’s origami. “But—”
“No family member?” She looks at my wedding ring.
“No,” I say, my right hand stealing over my left. “My husband—I’m not—we’re not together. Anymore.”
“A friend?” I shake my head. Whom could she possibly call? Not David, certainly not Wesley; Bina, maybe, except I really am fine. Jane isn’t.
“What about a doctor?”
“Julian Fielding,” I answer automatically, before I interrupt myself. “No. Not him.”
I watch her exchange glances with the nurse, who then exchanges glances with Little, who forwards the glance to
the doctor. It’s a Mexican standoff. I want to giggle. I don’t. Jane.
“As you know, you were unconscious in a park,” the doctor continues, “and the EMTs couldn’t identify you, so they brought you to Morningside. When you came around, you had a panic attack.”
“A big one,” pipes up the nurse.
The doctor nods. “A big one.” She inspects her clipboard. “And it happened again this morning. I understand you’re a doctor?”
“Not a medical doctor,” I tell her.
“What sort of doctor?”
“A psychologist. I work with children.”
“Do you have—”
“A woman’s been stabbed,” I say, my voice surging. The nurse steps back as though I’ve swung a fist. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”
The doctor snaps a glance at Little. “Do you have a history of panic attacks?” she asks me.
And so, with Little attending amiably from his chair and the nurse trembling like a hummingbird, I tell the doctor—tell all of them—about my agoraphobia, my depression, and, yes, my panic disorder; I tell them about my drug regimen, about my ten months indoors, about Dr. Fielding and his aversion therapy. It takes a while, with my voice still swathed in wool; every minute I tip more water down my throat, trickling past my words as they bubble up from within, spill over my lips.
Once I’ve finished, once I’ve sagged back into the pillow, the doctor consults her clipboard for a moment. Nods slowly. “All right,” she says. A brisker nod. “All right.” She looks up. “Let me speak with the detective. Detective, would you—” She gestures toward the door.
Little rises, the chair creaking as he stands. He smiles at me, follows the doctor from the room.
His absence leaves a void. It’s just me and the nurse now. “Have some more water,” she suggests.
They return some minutes later. Or maybe it’s longer than that; there’s no clock in here.
“The detective has offered to escort you back home,” says the doctor. I look at Little; he beams back. “And I’m giving you some Ativan to take later. But we need to make sure that you don’t have an attack before you get there. So the fastest way to do this . . .”
I know the fastest way to do this. And the nurse is already brandishing her needle.
37
“We thought it was a prank,” he explains. “Well, they did. I’m supposed to say we—or I guess we’re supposed to say we—because we are all working together. You know, ‘as a team.’ For the common good. Or something. Words to that effect.” He accelerates. “But I wasn’t there. So I didn’t think it was a prank. I didn’t know about it. If you follow me.”
I don’t.
We’re sliding down the avenue in his unmarked sedan; hazy afternoon sun blinks through the windows like a stone skipping across a pond. My head bumps against the glass, my face twinned beside me, my robe frothy at my neck. Little overflows in his seat, his elbow brushing mine.
I feel decelerated, body and brain.
“Of course, then they saw you all crumpled on the grass. That’s what they said, that’s how they described it. And they saw the door to your house open, and so they thought that’s where the incident occurred, but when they looked inside the place was empty. They had to look inside, you know. Because of what they’d heard on the phone.”
I nod. I can’t remember exactly what I said on that call.
“You got kids?” I nod again. “How many?” I extend a single finger. “Only child, huh? I’ve got four. Well, I’ll have four in January. We’ve got one on order.” He laughs; I don’t. I can barely move my lips. “Forty-four years old and a fourth kid on the way. I guess four is my lucky number.”
One, two, three, four, I think. In and out. Feel the lorazepam flying through your veins, like a flock of birds.
Little taps on the horn and the car in front of us scoots ahead. “Lunch rush,” he says.
I lift my eyes to the window. It’s been nearly ten months since I found myself on the streets, or in a car, or in a car on the streets. Ten months since I’ve seen the city from anywhere besides my house; it feels otherworldly, as though I’m exploring alien terrain, as though I’m coasting through some future civilization. The buildings loom impossibly tall, thrusting like fingers into a rinsed-blue sky above. Signs and shops streak past, blaring color: 99¢ fresh pizza!!!, Starbucks, Whole Foods (when did that set up shop?), an old fire station refitted as a condo building (units from $1.99m). Cool dark alleys; windows blank with sunlight. Sirens keen behind us, and Little shrugs the car to one side as an ambulance pushes past.
We approach an intersection, slow to a stop. I study the traffic light, glowing like an evil eye, and watch the stream of pedestrians flow along the crosswalk: two blue-jeaned mothers pushing strollers, a bent-double old man leaning on a cane, teenagers hunched under hot-pink backpacks, a woman in a turquoise burka. A green balloon, loosed from a pretzel stand, dizzies upward. Sounds invade the car: a giddy shriek, the seafloor rumble of traffic, a bicycle bell trilling. A rage of colors, a riot of sounds. I feel as though I’m in a coral reef.
“Off we go,” murmurs Little, and the car surges forward.
Is this what’s become of me? A woman who gawks like a guppy at an everyday lunch hour? A visitor from another world, awed by the miracle of a new grocery store? Deep within my dry-iced brain, something throbs, something angry and vanquished. A flush sunrises in my cheeks. This is what’s become of me. This is who I am.
If it weren’t for the drugs, I’d scream until the windows shattered.
38
“Now,” says Little, “here’s our turn.”
We ease right onto our street. My street.
My street as I haven’t seen it in almost a year. The coffee shop on the corner: still there, presumably still slinging the same too-bitter brew. The house beside it: fire-red as ever, its flower boxes crowded with chrysanthemums. The antique shop just across: dark and sulky now, a commercial space for rent sign pasted in the storefront. St. Dymphna’s, permanently forlorn.
And as the street opens before us, as we drive west beneath a vault of bare branches, I feel tears brimming in my eyes. My street, four seasons later. Strange, I think.
“What’s strange?” says Little.
I must have thought it out loud.
As the car nears the far end of the road, I catch my breath. There’s our house—my house: the black front door, the numbers 2-1-3 wrought in brass above the knocker; the panes of leaded glass on either side, the twin lanterns next to them with their orange electric light; four stories of windows staring dully straight ahead. The stone is less lustrous than I remember, with waterfalls of stains beneath the windows, like they’re weeping, and on the roof, I see a fragment of the rotted trellis. All the glass could stand to be washed—even from the street I can pick out the grime. “Best-looking house on the block,” Ed used to say, and I used to agree.
We’ve aged, the house and I. We’ve decayed.
We roll past it, past the park.
“It’s there,” I say to Little, wagging a hand toward the backseat. “My house.”
“I’d like to take you to speak to your neighbors with me,” he explains, parking the car at the curb and cutting the engine.
“I can’t.” I shake my head. Doesn’t he get it? “I need to go home.” I fumble with the seat belt, then realize that this isn’t likely to lead anywhere.
Little looks at me. Strokes the steering wheel. “How are we going to do this?” he asks, himself more than me.
I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to go home. You can bring them to my house. Cram them all in. Throw a fucking block party. But take me home now. Please.
He’s still eyeing me, and I realize I’ve spoken to him again. I huddle into myself.
A rap on the glass, quick and crisp. I look up; it’s a woman, sharp-nosed, olive-skinned, in a turtleneck and long coat. “Hold on,” says Little. He starts to lower my window, but I cringe, I whine, and he rolls it back up before
unpacking himself from the driver’s seat and stepping into the street, shutting the door gently behind him.
He and the woman speak to each other across the roof of the car. My ears sieve their words—stabbing, confused, doctor—as I sink underwater, close my eyes, nestle into the crook of the passenger seat; the air goes calm and still. Shoals flicker past—psychologist, house, family, alone—and I drift away. With one hand I idly stroke the other sleeve; my fingers swim into my robe, pinch a roll of skin bulging from my stomach.
I’m trapped in a police car fondling my fat. This is a new low.
After a minute—or is it an hour?—the voices subside. I crack one eye open, see the woman gazing down at me, glaring down at me. I screw my eye shut again.
The crunch of the driver’s door as Little opens it. Cool air wafts in, licks my legs, wanders around the cabin, makes itself at home.
“Detective Norelli is my partner,” I hear him tell me, a little flint in that dark-soil voice of his. “I’ve told her what’s happening with you. She’s going to bring some people into your house. That okay?”
I dip my chin, lift it.
“Okay.” The car gasps as he settles into his seat. I wonder how much he weighs. I wonder how much I weigh.
“You want to open your eyes?” he suggests. “Or are you good?”
I dip my chin again.
The door clacks shut and he revives the engine, knocks the gearshift into reverse, backs up—back, back, back—the vehicle catching its breath as it rolls over a seam in the pavement, until we brake. I hear Little switch the ignition again.
“Here we are,” he announces as I open my eyes, peek out the window.
Here we are. The house towers above me, the black mouth of the front door, the front steps like a tongue unspooled; the cornices form even brows above the windows. Olivia always speaks of brownstones as though they have faces, and from this angle, I see why.
“Nice place,” Little comments. “Big place. Four stories? Is that a basement?”
I incline my head.
“So five stories.” A pause. A leaf throws itself against my window, skitters away. “And you’re all alone in there?”
