Blink

by Sasha Dawn

  Shovel in a burger.

  Relive some awesome moments of the game with the guys sharing my table.

  Catch a glimpse of Chatham every now and again. Is it possible for a girl to get hotter every time you look at her?

  But I never go more than a minute or two without checking Damien’s truck. And suddenly, he’s there, walking down the sidewalk, smoke in hand. He climbs into the cab, rolls down the window, and settles in. He’s staring into the windows of the Tiny E, as if he’s waiting for me to emerge.

  He wouldn’t. I mean, we have a restraining order. It’s a coincidence. He’s out drinking, wants a smoke. Can’t smoke in bars in this county, so he’s having one in his truck. That’s all.

  But it’s not unbearably cold out, so why wouldn’t he just smoke outside the bar on the sidewalk like everyone else instead of walking four blocks?

  I still have a few minutes by the time the rest of the team is ordering dessert, but I pay my portion of the tab, making a point of waiting for Chatham to be up at the register so I can say good-bye.

  “Hey,” she says. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So smile.”

  It’s involuntary after she asks. “What time are you done tonight?”

  “I work till close.”

  “Around ten-thirty or so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sir. What a southern thing to say. “Want a ride home?”

  “I live just . . .” She points with her pen, but stops. She knows I know where the Churchill is. “Of course you know that.” She licks her lips. “If you want to see me later, you could ask.”

  “I’m asking.”

  She’s smiling.

  “If you don’t mind hanging out at my place,” I add. It’s only fair she knows what she’s getting into. “I have my sisters.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I mean, they’ll be in bed. Asleep. I know it’s not as exciting as seeing a movie, or going to a party, but—”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll come get you then.” I figure I can get them to bed late, after we get Chatham. What Rosie doesn’t know can’t hurt.

  “All right. I’ll text you when we’re done cleaning up.”

  I stand there stupidly for a second. What would she do if I just leaned over this counter and kissed her? I’d like to, and I kind of guess she knows it.

  I snap out of it. “See you soon then.”

  “I guess you will.”

  I walk out into the night.

  Damien’s watching me.

  I have to walk right past his truck to get to where I parked.

  I stay on my side of the street, and feel his eyes on me the whole time.

  I guess that’s to be expected. He’s sizing me up, preparing for what kind of barricade I might be if he decides to come after my mother again. I’m a lot bigger than I was the last time.

  When I start my SUV and pull away from the curb, I see that his headlights are suddenly on. He’s pulling away, too.

  Coincidence, I tell myself.

  But two turns later, I’m pretty certain he’s following me. If I know Damien, I know he’s keeping a measured distance, too, so that if I call the cops, he can truthfully say that he was farther than the mandatory five hundred feet from me. I wouldn’t put it past the asshole to have measured the lengths of the town blocks just to be sure.

  When I turn onto Carpenter Street, I pull over and wait a few seconds. Sure enough, Damien appears around the curve half a minute later, idling several car lengths behind me.

  I inch along.

  So does he.

  K n o c k i n g

  I reach for my phone. I’m not taking any chances.

  When you’re Rosie Michaels-Herron-Wick’s son, when you’ve been dealing your entire life with idiot after idiot, all of whom your mother falls for hook, line, and sinker, you know the number to the police station by heart. Furthermore, you know that in a town like Sugar Creek, there’s little else for the cops to do if they aren’t answering calls like the one I’m making—save arresting the occasional spray-paint graffiti artist, or busting the rare beach kegger out at the bluffs—so you know they’ll get to you faster than if you go through the emergency dispatch.

  “This is Joshua Michaels,” I say when the department picks up. “I’m almost to my house. Forty-four twenty-one Carpenter Street. My mother’s ex-husband is following me home, and we have an order of protection against him.”

  There.

  It’s that easy, isn’t it?

  Why my mother can’t manage to do such a thing is beyond me.

  I stay on the line and answer questions for the police: what kind of automobile is he in; how long has he been tailing me . . . that sort of thing.

  I pull into the driveway.

  Damien parks on the street, directly across from our house.

  I’m sure he’s waiting for me to get out of the car, or maybe he’s even waiting for Rosie to leave for her shift at the hospital.

  I keep the dispatcher on the line while I kill the engine, while I approach my front door, while Damien dares to bullet out at me. My key is already in the door, and I’m inside and barricading us in by the time he reaches the house.

  “He’s coming to the door,” I tell the dispatcher.

  The twins are up the half-flight of stairs watching a movie and giggling like crazy. That’s good. They should be happy. I’d rather they live an existence much more carefree than mine. But I hear them gasp when Damien pounds on the door.

  “Joshy?” They’re at the railing suddenly, their baby-fat hands grasping the spindles while they press their cheeks through the divides.

  Still holding my phone to my ear, I put a finger to my lips.

  Expressions of terror cross their little faces.

  “You’re late.” Rosie glides to the top of the stairs, piercing a simple, round earring through the lobe of her left ear.

  I’m five minutes early, actually. “Damien’s outside.”

  Her eyes roll, as if he’s a mere inconvenience, instead of potentially dangerous, and she lets out a dramatic sigh.

  “I’m on the phone with the police,” I say. “They’re on their way.”

  The door vibrates against my back with his pounding.

  Her eyes widen, and she bolts down the stairs, and before I have a second to prevent it, she pulls my phone away from me and terminates the call.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  She shoves the phone back at me, then reaches around me for the doorknob, like she’s going to go out there and actually talk to him, but I’m too quick for her.

  “Listen to me.” Her voice is low, something between a hiss and a whisper. “If the police come and make trouble for him, he may go to jail.”

  “Good.”

  “At least for a little while.”

  “Good.”

  “And that means he won’t be working. And that means no child support.”

  Is she kidding? “He rarely pays you anyway.”

  “No, he’s paid twice now. In a row.”

  Which means he’s had her in bed at least twice since the order of protection was granted. This isn’t good from a legal standpoint, let alone a personal one.

  He pounds again. “Open the fucking door! I’ll teach your fucking ass!”

  I glare at my mother, silently plead with her not to do what I know she’s going to do anyway. “If he comes in this house . . .” I don’t have to finish my sentence. We all know what could happen if he comes in. “I’m sure he’s been drinking.” I can tell by the inflection of his voice. “The cops are on their way,” I say a little louder.

  The pounding stops. Maybe he gave up and left. Maybe he heard my warning.

  The twins are now huddled, arms around each other, in the corner.

  “Move,” Rosie says.

  “No.”

  “Move.”

  We stare at each other for what seems like an eternity, a sile
nt, stoic battle of wills.

  Then something catches my eye up the half-flight of stairs, at the back door in the kitchen. Damien walked around the house. He’s turning the knob. The door isn’t locked.

  Rosie follows my gaze, then darts up the stairs to the kitchen.

  He’s already one foot in the door by the time she reaches him.

  “You!” He points around her, as if his finger can poke me between the eyes from a distance. “When you gonna fuckin’ learn you’re not in fuckin’ charge of every fuckin’ thing?”

  My mother’s hands are splayed against his chest. “Honey, listen.”

  But despite her efforts to distract him, he’s still crossing the room—she’s between us, walking backward—halfway to the stairs now.

  I stand my ground. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You can’t keep a man from his family.” He grins, reaches around my mother’s body, gives her ass a squeeze.

  Maybe I can’t, but the courts can. “The police are on their way,” I say.

  “Honey, it’s true.” Rosie’s against the pantry door now, with fistfuls of Damien’s collar, but he’s still staring at me. “He called before I could stop him. You should go, okay? What if I come over later? After my shift? Okay?” She puckers her lips, and rises up on her tiptoes to peck a kiss onto his lips. “Do you see? I still have the unicorn.”

  With open eyes, and a stare directed at me, one that might very well burn into my soul, he returns her kiss. Their lips part, tongues thrash. He cups her between the legs, palms a breast. Taunting me. Showing me he can do whatever he damn well pleases to my mother, which means he can do whatever he wants to the rest of us.

  Their kiss breaks.

  Rosie’s hands are on his face now. “You should go.” With a hand on his cheek, she coaxes his stare back to hers. “Honey? I’ll deal with him, but before the police come—”

  “You don’t meet me later,” he says, “I’m coming right back.”

  “I’ll be there, honey. I promise.”

  He backs off.

  My mother’s shoulders slump, and her body goes sort of limp against the pantry door.

  “And you!” He jabs that finger in my direction again. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Margaret lets out a little whimper.

  “Is that one of my daughters I hear?”

  I cough, in case one of them lets out another noise. Out of the corner of my eye, I see them, still arm-in-arm, stiff like statues, their brown eyes wide with fear.

  “They’re in bed,” Rosie bluffs.

  “Well then, I’ll just go check on them. Maybe they want to come spend the night with their daddy. Hell, if mommy can’t take care of them tonight . . . why not?”

  The first hint of sirens sounds in the distance.

  “Some other time. You should go.” Rosie plants her hands on his chest again, but she must have put on too much pressure because he gives her a little shove backward.

  “I’ll teach your fucking ass, you fucking punk.” He points at me one last time, and ducks out the back door. “You don’t come to my place later”—now, the finger points at my mother—“I’ll be back.”

  The door clicks shut.

  Half a second after, Rosie’s throwing the deadbolt, bawling.

  “Mom.” I make my way from the foyer up the stairs, give my sisters a glance that I hope reassures them. It’s all okay now.

  “God damn it, Josh!”

  “Listen.” Before I get another word out, she’s on me, smacking me with open palms, arms flailing, chest heaving with sobs. Smack, smack, smack.

  I catch her wrists. “Rosie. Stop.”

  Her shoulders hunch, and violent tears send tremors through her system.

  I let go of her.

  She wipes her nose with the back of her hand and turns away from me. “God, now I have to . . . I have to go over there, and I have to—”

  “Just let the cops do their thing,” I tell her.

  “Why do you have to make trouble?”

  “Make trouble?”

  “You can’t ever just let something go, can you?”

  “I was just coming home. He followed me.”

  “For no reason?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why would he do that? What did you do?”

  “Nothing. He’s fucking crazy. Remember that dog? Remember what he did to the dog, Rosie?”

  I know she’s thinking of the black lab, the only pet we ever had. She gets quiet with this somber expression whenever he crosses her mind. But she quickly shakes herself free from the memory. “I have to go to work. You did this.” She grabs her jacket and the salad she packed, and gives me a look that could turn me to stone. “You deal with it.” Not bothering to kiss my sisters, she slips down the stairs and out the door, muttering about things she has to do now after her shift.

  “Joshy?” Caroline tugs at my jeans. “Is Mommy okay?”

  I bend to pick her up. “It’s okay now.” I tousle Margaret’s hair when she snuggles up to me, too.

  The sirens grow louder.

  L o o k i n g G l a s s

  As insane as tonight was, it was hardly the worst thing I’d ever endured.

  At fourteen, I stepped between Damien and my mother, who’d lifted then-two-year-old Margaret in front of her like a human shield. His knife sliced into my arm.

  I now run my fingers over the silvery-white line on my flesh. No longer tender to the touch, no longer an ugly, stamped memento of an even uglier night, it’s just part of me, part of my past. Any lower, and the scar would look like a ragged suicide attempt.

  I spring up from my prone position on the couch upstairs, where I’m resting just down the hall from where my sisters sleep, and stare at the wall. Everything is still and quiet. I watch a spider crawl from one end of the room to the other.

  I’d talked to the police tonight, and my little sisters backed up my story, even if my mother, when the cops called her cell phone while she was on her way to the hospital, pretended not to know anything about a visit from her drunken ex.

  “It couldn’t have happened.” Her voice had come through on the speakerphone. “I was at home until a few minutes ago. I just passed you on Carpenter Street. You were going to my house? I drive a VW bug. Do any of you remember seeing me?”

  One of the officers had nodded in agreement, in verification.

  “I’m sorry my son wasted your time,” Rosie had said. “And my daughters . . . well, they idolize their brother. They’d say anything he asked them to. He’ll be dealt with, I assure you, when I get home.”

  I stuck to the truth; Rosie flat-out lied. She threw me under the bus. Told the cops I was prone to causing drama if I didn’t get my way, and that I was pissed because I’d hoped to go out with a girlfriend and was stuck at home watching my sisters. This phony report, she guessed, was my way of retaliating, my way of trying to convince her to miss her shift and come back home.

  Needless to say, when Chatham texted that she was ready, and the cops asked about it, they pretty much closed their notebooks and stopped taking me seriously.

  “We have your account on record,” one of them said, lingering at the doorway. “Let us know if anything else happens.”

  Yeah, yeah.

  So I had to cancel with Chatham.

  With no guarantee that Damien won’t be out there somewhere, waiting for us—and now that there’s no chance he’ll be in a cell overnight, he’ll only stalk me again—I’m not going to take my sisters out of the house, not even to rush them out to the car and back. So now it’s after midnight, and I’m alone in a house that’s deadly quiet, except for the rainforest tracks sifting out from the girls’ room.

  I’m so pissed I could start breaking shit. And maybe I would be throwing Rosie’s stupid ceramic unicorn against the wall, if I didn’t just get the girls tucked in about an hour ago, freshly bathed and smelling like lavender baby shampoo. It’s always hard to calm them down after a dramatic scene like the one they
witnessed tonight. I can’t stir things up for them again, so the ceramic unicorn stays put.

  My phone buzzes with a text.

  My mother’s name, accompanied by the middle-finger emoji—which is how I programmed her in—stares up at me from the screen.

  I almost don’t want to look at her message. It’s either a rant about my decision to involve the police, or considering we’re still somewhat in stage three, a bleak explanation of why she’d lie to the cops, which might include any of the following:

  Child support is hard to collect from a man in jail.

  Better to let sleeping dogs lie, or don’t mess with the bull, or insert cliché here.

  Or some bullshit about the no-contact portion of the order of protection works both ways, and she’s in violation of it, too, because she slept with the guy last week.

  Yeah, well, whose fault is that?

  Her message: Sorry. I’ll explain later.

  I delete it.

  I hear something. A scratching, or maybe a tapping, coming from downstairs.

  Instantly, I’m on my feet. I tune my ears into the creaks and the ticks of the house.

  Am I imagining it?

  I hear the scratch again, and this time, it’s followed by a thump.

  I grab my phone. If I call the police again, and again they can’t substantiate my report, it won’t go over well. Still, I can’t be too careful. I can hold my own against a drunk, even if he is a beast of a man, but I have to think about my sisters.

  My phone buzzes again, its vibration sending a humming sensation through my nerves.

  Geez, I get it, Rosie. You screwed up. Again. I’ve got bigger problems right now.

  I go to swipe away the message, still contemplating calling the police, when I see Chatham’s name on the screen. I tap on it.

  Let me in?

  I glance at the back door in the kitchen. The porch is empty.

  I walk down the half-flight of steps to the landing and peek through the window next to the front door. No one’s on that porch, either.

  And there it is again: the tapping/scratching. Another thump.

  I leap down the second half-flight, even skip a few stairs, and round the corner to my bedroom, where I see her—Chatham Claiborne—kneeling outside my window.