The Me You See

by Stevens, Shay Ray

  “You know, you might be fooling a lot of people,” I whispered into the car, “but for the record you have never fooled me.”

  She continued staring straight ahead, keeping her breath constant and measured.

  “So, Stefia Lenae Krist, I’m gonna ask you one more time if there is anything you want to tell me.”

  She turned from the windshield and looked right at my face with those bottomless eyes.

  “He’s just my neighbor.”

  I blinked.

  “And,” she continued, “the owner of the theater I work at.”

  “Bullshit,” I hissed into the car.

  “Yeah? Prove it.”

  And then she smiled because she knew I couldn’t.

  **

  The performance continued on stage in front of us, but I’d spent so much time in flashbacks I wasn’t even sure what the storyline was that I’d paid sixty bucks for Mindy and I to see.

  It almost didn’t matter.

  “You can’t prove what you can’t see,” Stefia said to another actor on stage.

  It almost didn’t matter because it was as if the lines she recited in the play were delivered with perfect timing to the disgusting nostalgia in my head. Questions about everything I’d done or failed to do stabbed at my brain as my stomach worked itself into a giant knot. My armpits wept with perspiration like it was July, not February, and a warm twinge of nausea pricked at the top of my throat. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, trying not to be a distraction.

  “What’s wrong?” Mindy whispered.

  It obviously wasn’t working

  “I don’t feel well at all,” I said, swallowing hard. “I need to sneak out for a bit.”

  She nodded and I left as quietly as possible, whispering apologies to a few patrons who didn’t bother to hide their annoyance. An usher standing at the doors pointed the way through the lobby to the restrooms.

  I ran water in one of the sinks until it was icy cold and then cupped my hands under the stream. I lowered my face into the puddle I held in my palms, a soothing chill enveloping my head.

  The mirror reflected a pale face back to me.

  **

  What do you do when people won’t say anything? What can you do?

  I was only eleven when I had woke early that morning to hear mom crying in her room. Nameless Boyfriend Number Six had just left, but not before screaming obscenities and cracking mom’s face against the nightstand.

  I wanted to help her. My god, the frustration of standing over her how many times as she bled into the carpet, the helplessness of hearing, “Don’t tell anyone, Gage. He didn’t mean to.” I couldn’t fathom her slipping away, moment by moment, year by year, and knowing all she had to do was speak up. Tell somebody. Make an admission.

  At fifteen, I rested my hand on top of my mother’s closed casket and spit out guilt and frustration at her defeated body that had been beaten lifeless for no other reason than she’d believed her lips were sewn shut. I had tried to make things better. I had tried to help my mother, but it was like watching a shadow bind a piano wire around her throat while she believed she had no hands to pull it off. I couldn’t open her mouth for her. I could not reach down her throat and pull the words out. I couldn’t help her.

  Maybe that’s why I became a cop. In some naive corner of my head I believed that some victim somewhere would be saved if I just walked in and said, “Tell him to stop!” It hadn’t worked for my mother, but maybe it was because I had started too late. If I got there quicker…if I started earlier…I was going to empower someone. I was going to save someone’s life.

  The longer I was a cop, the more I realized that superhero I’m going to change the world fairy tale was a joke. You couldn’t help every person. Shit, you couldn’t help most people. There were an infinite number of souls who slipped through the cracks because of their own decisions, and that’s just the way it was.

  **

  I checked the men’s room mirror again, desperately hoping for a darker shade of pale than when I’d first splashed my face.

  And then I heard it. Screaming from somewhere outside the bathroom.

  I pulled open the restroom door and the chaotic discord swelled. They were not squeals of delight in reaction to a stage effect, nor were they cries of surprise or awe. No, this wailing was primal. A collective howl of frantic voices that pricked something raw at the base of my neck.

  Something was wrong inside the theater.

  I picked up my step, headed for the door to the audience, my head electric and alive with synapses firing in preparation for whatever was happening inside.

  And then I heard it. A gunshot.

  And then another one. Another gunshot.

  The average reaction time for a cop is 2.2 seconds. It’s immediate. It was the entire reason we trained. I couldn’t tell you how many situations I’d been in where my brain quickly processed I should grab for my gun, and I looked down to find it was already in my hand.

  Another gunshot. And another one.

  Shit.

  I hated Granite Ledge.

  Before I reached the door of the theater, it slammed open, a crowd of patrons spilling into the lobby. They screamed in disjointed, short breathed phrases I couldn’t string together.

  “The shooter?” I questioned one man. “Where is the shooting coming from?”

  “Stage,” was all he could choke out.

  Shit.

  Slowly pulling open the theater door and slipping inside, I probed my way into the dark audience. Always aware of my back, my feet, my head, where my gun was pointed, the crying from behind me as I crept forward in the aisle.

  Taking shelter behind a ledge, I craned my neck to see ahead. In the stage lights still lit, I could see three bodies lying on stage, blood leaking into puddles around them.

  I hated Granite Ledge.

  My eyes darted across the stage; I needed to identify the shooter. I needed to find my target.

  An actor who appeared to have already been shot once limped across the stage cradling his bleeding, broken arm and called out, “You don’t mean to…you don’t want to…” before a second bullet ripped through his face.

  And then, I saw my target.

  Shit.

  A woman nearby, frantic at hearing another shot fired, hurled herself closer to me. She grabbed at the waist of my pants, setting all her weight near my midsection as though she was trying to climb over me to safety.

  “Keep your head down!” I hissed, pushing her face towards the floor. Then I moved with calculated starts and stops, slinking my way from aisle to aisle, hiding behind chairs until finally I made it to the quarter wall near the orchestra pit. There was too much happening on stage for anyone up there to realize that’s where I was headed.

  But I couldn’t screw it up. I needed a good shot. It wasn’t like Hollywood. In Hollywood the perfect shot presented itself, the hero took it, the music swelled and the credits rolled. In real life, civilians stood up, got in the way, chaos erupted and the good guy lost sight of where he had aimed.

  I needed a good shot.

  We trained for how to make split second decisions—because every decision mattered. I racked my brain for all the black and white, logical, no nonsense training I’d sat through since before I’d even worked an actual day on the street. It was all there in my brain. I needed each piece of it now.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move within the curtain fabric on stage. Someone was hiding inside it. I could see the bottoms of their shoes; I could tell it was a woman from the glossy white leather flats. I wanted to get to her. To tell her to stop moving. To stand still so she wasn’t seen. I wanted to tell her…

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Within seconds, the young woman body’s slumped to the floor, the white lace from her costume slowly turning as red as the curtain she’d tried to hide behind.

  In training they tell you that once you have identified the suspect in a mass
shooting situation, you don’t negotiate. It’s not like the movies. You don’t try to talk to them. You don’t try reasoning. You see them and you take them out.

  Finish.

  Them.

  Off.

  I turned.

  I had my shot.

  I took aim.

  But there’s a millisecond there to think. There’s a minuscule fraction of a moment for something to go through your mind. And my last thought before I squeezed my trigger three times was that all the training in the world would never have prepared me for Stefia, with her impenetrable eyes, being the one I’d have to shoot.

  -Stefia-

  There is magic within the molecules of theater air. It is easier to breathe. Each gasp fills your lungs to bursting; your brain springs alive with the tingle of unleashed creativity.

  Theater animates you. It grows you. Theater helps you know you exist.

  If real life were like theater, you would write the script. You could choose your setting and your props. If a mistake was made, you could start over.

  Take a break.

  Run the scene again.

  If someone would have handed me that evening as a script, it would have been easier. If someone could have blocked the scene, I’d have known what to do. If I could have been directed where to put my hand and turn my face when his eyes questioned me, how to react when Niles asked if something was wrong, the moment would have been beautiful. But instead I heaved, retching out the news like it was poison.

  “Pregnant?” he said slowly, like the word was sticky on his lips. He combed the fingers of one hand through his hair, blurting out something like a laugh.

  I forced my lips to bend into a smile. It was a pathetic attempt.

  “Wait. You’re serious?” he asked. “You’re for real?”

  “For real.”

  I couldn’t read him. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He sat up from his reclined position on the couch and sucked air through his closed teeth; it sounded like a leaky tire, only the air was going the wrong way. A volatile stillness crept into the house. It was so quiet all I could hear was the bubbler on the exotic fish tank in Niles’ office.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Long enough.”

  He kept his face guarded. He grazed the pad of his thumb back and forth across the leather of the couch we sat on and focused so hard on the window above us I thought he was trying to separate the panes of glass in his vision.

  By all rights, it should have been a lovely scene—the warm glow of the fireplace reflecting off the red of the couch, the clink of two ice cubes in his snifter of brandy, sultry jazz standards playing through his iPod. It was how I would have planned the scenery if it were up to me to write the scene.

  But it wasn’t up to me to write it, and it wasn’t a lovely scene. I stood from the couch and moved towards the fireplace, fingering the framed publicity shots he’d crammed like trophies on his mantle.

  “So, then,” I breathed out. “What are you thinking?”

  Niles sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees with his hands cupped around his snifter.

  “I’m thinking darling, the things we go through together…”

  I put my hands out in front of the fireplace, soaking up the compassionate heat of the flames in my palms.

  “I’m also thinking,” he said, rising from the couch, “that I need more brandy.”

  He padded to the kitchen to half fill his glass, and then poked his head back around the corner.

  “You want some?” he asked.

  “Want some what?”

  “Brandy.”

  I stared at him, unsure of why he would offer.

  “No?” he said. “Just me, then. Okay.”

  My news had lit his nerves and complicated his behavior. He took a sip of brandy and set what was left on the mantle. He stood next to me and watched the flames etch into the cedar log that filled the room with the smell of woody goodness.

  “So,” I started, wishing again that I had a script to follow.

  “Yes?”

  “Niles, what are we going to do?”

  His steely eyes searched mine. Maybe he was hoping I would answer my own question. Then he slowly pulled me into his chest and kissed the top of my head. He wrapped his arms around me, keeping his chin settled in my hair.

  “Now, Stefia,” he said. “You know we can get through this, right?”

  I settled my face on his chest and nestled into the scent of him. I breathed in who he was; older, wiser, warmer. My head spun in circles coming to terms with the idea that part of that—part of him—lived within me now.

  Pastor Walter was right. Everything was going to be okay. Why had I second guessed it? Why had I doubted at all?

  The embrace Niles held me in swayed ever so slightly, and when I looked up into his eyes, his lips played out what I could only describe as a serious smile. I knew it was not the alcohol causing him to rock; his tolerance was much higher than what he’d sipped on that night. No, the movement was actually an invitation to dance. And so we swayed in time to Ella Fitzgerald’s Someone To Watch Over Me and the snap of the cedar log in the fireplace.

  It was beautiful. And for that single breath of perfection, I was glad I hadn’t written the scene of how the night would go because I never would have captured it with such restoring grace.

  The song ended, signaling our dance was over and Niles gave a sweeping bow. And I didn’t yet know it, but he’d disarmed me by the upturn at the corner of his mouth, all the while keeping something hidden behind his eyes.

  He grabbed for another sip of his brandy and then patted at his pockets like he was searching for car keys. Finding nothing, he stepped to the kitchen, checked the top of the refrigerator, and found what he was looking for.

  His wallet.

  He opened it and set five crisp hundred dollar bills on the mantle, fanning them out where they laid.

  “That should be enough to take care of it,” he said. “If not, let me know.”

  My mouth went dry.

  “Take care of it?” I asked.

  He swallowed his last sip of brandy.

  “Let yourself out,” he said, kissing my forehead. “Okay?”

  Then he walked up to his bedroom with his empty snifter and quietly closed his door.

  **

  We didn’t talk for two weeks. I went to rehearsal as normal, but he stayed away from the theater. I knew we needed to clear the air—opening night was only a week away. So on a chilly evening after rehearsal, I called him from the theater and said my car wouldn’t start and I needed a ride. He showed up fifteen minutes later and found me sitting alone on the edge of the stage.

  “No one else could drive you home?” he asked, blowing the chill from his hands.

  “My car is fine. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Here,” I said, sliding off the stage to place a coiled wad of cash in his hand.

  He eyed me curiously, and then counted the money.

  “But…this is five hundred dollars.”

  “Were you expecting change?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to bring me anything back.”

  “I didn’t need the money.”

  “You paid for it yourself?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not having an abortion.”

  He didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t move a muscle.

  “Tell me you are joking, Stefia.”

  “I could,” I said, rubbing at my elbow in a nervous habit, “but then I’d be lying.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to be.”

  He slapped his hand up to the winter hat still on his head and ripped it off in one swoop.

  “Damn it, Stefia, don’t do this!” He balled up the hat and tossed it at the ground. “You’ll ruin your future. You’ll ruin this theater.”

  “This theater?” I laughed. “How does me keeping a
baby ruin this building?”

  “Not the building, the theater,” he said, stressing the word to show I’d missed the difference. “We are the theater; don’t you get that by now? My brains and money, your beauty and talent…you’re just going to throw that away for a kid?”

  “Trust me, Niles. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You have no goddamn clue what you’re doing!”

  His eyes spun wildly around the room, first up to the flies, then across the stage, then around him in the aisle. Dragging his hands through his hair and messing it up more than his hat already had, he exhaled forcefully and muttered something I didn’t fully hear.

  “What?”

  “I said if you keep that kid, it’s not mine.”

  If I would have written the script, I’d have known he was going to say that. I would have prepared a witty response to follow his line. But I hadn’t written the script so his words were like a blade pulled from nowhere and twisted into my gut.

  “No one will ever know it’s yours...” I finally said, swallowing a hard, dry lump. But he wouldn’t stop. Taking him out of the picture and removing his responsibility only further irritated the situation.

  “You keep that kid and I guarantee you’ll never work in any theater around here again,” he said and scowled. His eyes glared with intensity and turned the skin of my face hot. “I know people, Stefia. I’ll make sure you never make it on stage anywhere.”

  “Niles…”

  “I’m not joking, Stefia. You can’t keep this kid. You can’t do theater with baggage. You can’t…”

  “Baggage?” I screamed. “You mean someone you care about?”

  “I mean something that holds you back,” he spit out. “Something you’re putting before the theater. Something that distracts you…”

  “You don’t have anything holding you back? You don’t have anything you’re putting before the theater?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really, Niles?”

  “Really.”

  “Then what am I?”

  My question smothered the room in silence. Time seemed slow and fat, sloshing through like humidity, as I lingered for the answer Niles held on his lips.

  “You, Stefia, are an amazingly talented, beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who fucked up.”