The Altar Girl: A Prequel

by Orest Stelmach

  Nadia looked away. Stifled a desire to puke. It wasn’t neat at all. It was disgusting and scary. If the man weren’t such a rodent, she would have felt sorry for him. Nadia closed her eyes and replayed scenes from Mrs. Chimchak’s lectures on lower-body anatomy and first aid.

  She could do this. Yeah, she could.

  She was a soldier.

  Nadia walked up to the Rodent, knelt down, and put her hand on his shoulder. It was a calming thing Mrs. Chimchak had taught her. This man needed the comfort of the human touch, but his wife the Ferret was too busy bitching at the Giraffe, probably because she was jealous of her, and the brother probably didn’t want to touch him because they were always fighting. Not like her and Marko. They never fought.

  Everyone stopped talking the second her hand touched his shoulder. The Rodent stopped moaning, too.

  Nadia looked into the Rodent’s beady eyes as his mouth dropped open in surprise. His forehead dripped with sweat. The man was hurting bad. Nadia could tell. She knew pain from breaking her nose and this was worse.

  “How are you feeling?” Nadia said.

  The Rodent exploded with mean laughter, the kind that’s usually a prelude to swears and insults, but Nadia smiled and stopped him cold. Actually made him smile.

  “I’m doing great, kid. A-plus, mother. Best day of my life. Who are you?”

  “My name is Nadia. In five hours or less, you’re going to be in a hospital, and they’re going to take good care of you. I’m going to help you get there. Rehab is going to be like . . . like no fun at all, but that’s not something you need to worry about now. Right? Positive thinking, positive thinking. It’s so important. So tell me, before I start, how did this happen?”

  The other three exchanged quiet looks of amazement. The Rodent’s jaw hung open for an extra second.

  “We were fooling around,” he said. “I was chasing my wife downhill. I had to turn to avoid a rock and my foot just got stuck. The rest of my body moved but it didn’t. I fell over. And then this.”

  A spasm of pain hit him so badly he screamed loud enough for anyone within a mile radius to hear. Problem was, the only people within a mile radius were probably at his feet. Unless her father and Marko were nearby. But if they were close, Nadia was surprised one of them hadn’t helped the strangers. Maybe they were far away, just as her father had told her. It didn’t matter now, she thought. She had the situation under control.

  Nadia squeezed his shoulder the way Mrs. Chimchak had taught her. The squeeze provided extra comfort, reassurance that the original touch had true feeling behind it.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Nadia said.

  The Rodent gritted his teeth as a spasm of pain racked him. “You think so, kid?”

  “I know so. There’s a name for what happened to you. It’s a common break for athletes and hikers and people like that. People like you.”

  That made him chuckle through the pain. He probably wasn’t much of an athlete or hiker but Nadia thought it might cheer him up to hear her say it.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “What’s it called, kid?”

  “Spiral tibial fracture. It happens when you plant one leg, twist it, and then fall. Yup. It’s called a spiral tibial fracture.”

  CHAPTER 9

  LIFE WAS MOVING in slow motion now . . .

  Donnie put my glass on the table. He didn’t reach for the refrigerator door. Instead he paused to listen to himself. He grinned. I had no idea what he was talking about because I was focused on what I was about to do. Which was unthinkable. The conviction with which I needed to act, the suffering I was going to inflict, the repercussions to my face, body, and life if I messed it up . . .

  “You still go to the blessing of the Easter baskets?”

  I sharpened my focus. Heard Donnie. He’d just asked a question. I realized I’d better answer.

  “Sure,” I said. “I go every year.” In fact, I couldn’t remember when I’d last gone. Maybe fifteen years ago.

  “I used to go with my mother. Everyone getting together in the school gym for the priest to go around and sprinkle holy water on their babkas and tacky colored eggs. It’s all bullshit but I liked it. I liked it because it was the one day a year where no one gave a shit who you were. Your family welcomed you back. The community welcomed you back. It’s just a great tradition. Wayward boys like me can come home for one day. No matter what you’ve done, everyone is happy to see you. Happy to see children with their mothers.”

  Donnie Angel extended his arm and grasped the fridge door. He had to twist a little bit to the right because of the refrigerator’s location in the corner. He opened the door and reached inside to grab the bottle.

  I jumped to my feet, stepped forward and curled my right leg up to my waist. This time I was the one with the element of surprise. His face registered shock but there was no time for him to react. His legs remained twisted, still facing the fridge. I snapped my heel against his lower left leg with all my might. The meat of my shoe connected with the bone.

  I heard the crack. It was a sick, gut-wrenching noise. I must have closed my eyes before impact because the image of a paint stick breaking in half flashed in my mind. By the time I opened them, Donnie was lying on the floor wailing. He brought his hands to his leg and touched it, but that only made him scream even more.

  My plan at this point was to get out of the van as quickly as possible. Much to my shock, however, I stood there staring down at the man who’d taken me against my will, who had a machine to break legs and was about to use it on me. The truth was I felt compassion for him. He was a human being. I’d hurt him. To make things worse, I truly believed that he liked me. In his own demented way, he believed he’d done me a favor by not killing me, and by planning to break my left instead of my right leg. And, as he’d said at the beginning, we went back. We went way back, all the way to the Grantmoor on the Berlin Turnpike.

  Also, I’d been a devout Ukrainian Catholic growing up, and I took this cheek-turning business very seriously. I believed in the life-affirming power of unequivocal forgiveness. Based on my life until this moment, I would have expected to have been consumed with empathy for the man I’d hurt even though it was an act of self-defense. That’s the way I was wired.

  But now, compassion wasn’t the only emotion that gripped me. Instead, a quiet rage had gathered inside me. It was accompanied by a giddy sense of satisfaction. It coursed through my veins, drowned my Catholic tendencies, and left me liberated. Perhaps I’d overdosed on humility, which was a way of saying I was sick of being pushed around. By my parents, my ex-husband, my bosses in New York, and now Donnie Angel. Whatever the reasons, I felt more empowered than I had since childhood as I gazed at the agony I’d inflicted.

  “Bitch . . . Are you fucking crazy?” Donnie clenched his teeth as though gathering some more willpower to fight the pain. A deep breath. Eyes looking as though they might pop out of his sockets. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I know what I’ve done.” The words rolled off my tongue one at a time. “Spiral . . . tibial . . . fracture.”

  I assumed the van was soundproofed for obvious reasons. The driver and the other man who’d lifted me off the street hadn’t heard Donnie any more than they would have heard me if my leg were the one that had been broken. I found the phone beside the liquor decanters and lifted the receiver.

  A man’s voice. “Yeah?”

  “Pull over,” I said, sounding as agitated as I could. “I think he’s having a heart attack.”

  The van swerved right and slowed down. I jumped out the back door before it came to a complete stop, leaving Donnie shouting obscenities in my wake. What impressed the hell out of me was that he’d switched to Ukrainian swear words. Maybe that line I’d made up about my godfather saying Donnie had a Ukrainian soul wasn’t completely fiction after all.

  I recogni
zed my location as soon as my feet kissed the pavement. The grand stairs leading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the right. The former Stanhope Hotel on the left. Fifth Avenue and 81st Street. Six blocks from my apartment. They really had been circling my neighborhood.

  I ran north along 5th past the museum. The van wouldn’t be able to make a U-turn. Traffic flowed only one way and that was south. I didn’t bother looking behind me. I kept my eyes focused on the lights atop the yellow cabs.

  A vacant taxi appeared within four blocks. I jumped inside and told the driver to take an immediate left on 84th Street. The van was still parked to the side. I’d left the door open behind me but it was shut now. I suspected the men were tending to Donnie.

  I told the cabbie to drive straight across 83rd and drop me off on 1st Avenue. I ran the final block to my apartment and locked myself inside. Logic dictated Donnie would expect me to go home, but I wasn’t worried about him. I lived in a protected building with seasoned doormen. No thug was going to get past them. To make sure, I called downstairs and told them a blind date had gone bad and to keep me informed if any strangers asked about me. The doorman who picked up promised to keep me safe, and I was glad I’d been a generous tipper at the end of the year, back when I had the money to be one.

  I trembled as I peeled my clothes off. Didn’t leave the steaming shower for twenty minutes until I’d managed to calm down.

  Then I did what I’d been planning to do all night.

  I uncorked that bottle of wine and tried to figure out what I was going to do next.

  CHAPTER 10

  NADIA CUT TWO small branches off a young oak tree and trimmed them to arm’s length. Using some twine, she secured the sticks to each side of the Rodent’s ankle with the Ace bandage to form a splint. That locked the ankle in place so that it wouldn’t be hurt any worse when they moved him. He winced from the pain as she put it on, and Nadia did her best to keep him calm by talking to him as she worked.

  Afterward, Nadia cut down two saplings with her knife. The whacking tired her out even more, and for a second she was afraid she might faint. Only adrenaline kept her going. The Giraffe noticed this and came rushing to her side with genuine concern, but Nadia waved her off and kept working. She asked the Giraffe to help her spread out the poncho.

  After they did so, Nadia fixed a sapling to each side of her poncho and made a stretcher out of it. Together, the four of them lifted the Rodent onto the stretcher. The nearest ranger station was three miles away. Nadia drew a map for them and directed them toward the trail.

  The Rodent thanked her profusely. He reached out with his hand, grasped her shoulder, and squeezed it the way she had done to his. The Kangaroo offered Nadia money, but she refused. She was almost insulted but realized they were city folk and they wouldn’t understand the PLAST code, that it was her duty to help anyone who needed it. They offered to take her address and send her the poncho, but she refused that, too. She was worried her father would get mad at her for giving out their address to strangers.

  The Giraffe came over and gave her a hug. Nadia recoiled at first because she wasn’t used to anyone touching her, but she knew the Giraffe meant well so she decided it was okay.

  Afterward, the Kangaroo and the Ferret lifted the stretcher and followed the Giraffe toward the trail.

  Nadia made her way back toward camp. She’d given away her poncho, so if it rained she’d probably get soaked. It was a bad thing to be in the forest without a poncho. There was a reason Mrs. Chimchak had taught her to keep it at the top of her knapsack. Still, giving away the poncho was a matter of honor. She had to put the well-being of a sick individual above her own.

  As soon as she returned to camp, though, Nadia realized she had an even bigger problem than life without a poncho.

  Her fire had died. Partially burned wood and ashes were scattered all over the place. Some animal had ransacked her camp. There were no glowing embers, no sign of life for her to work with whatsoever.

  She’d drunk all her water. She’d planned to boil some from the stream when she returned.

  Now she had no poncho, no water, no fire, and no matches with which to light a new one.

  And she had two days and two nights to go.

  CHAPTER 11

  I SLEPT FITFULLY and woke up the next morning with that dread in the pit of my stomach, the one that reminds you something horrible is going on in your life even before you’re alert. Then I remembered my abduction, Donnie Angel’s champagne wishes and caviar dreams, and breaking his leg like a paint stick. My hunger pains vanished in a blink, and I found a moment of joy amidst the misery. If nothing else good came out of it, my current predicament was going to help me lose those last seven and a half pounds.

  Even before downing the second of three glasses of wine the night before, I knew exactly what I was going to do next. I’d become a competent financial analyst because of my detailed approach to understanding a business and its financial statements. One of the ways I dissected a complex holding company with a myriad of subsidiaries was to draw a picture. It helped me visualize what was going on among the individual entities, if money was being borrowed or lent to support one at the cost of another, or if funds were being siphoned off at the top to pay the owners. I spent the morning visualizing my godfather’s life the same way, and plotting the course of my investigation. Then I placed a phone call to an old friend.

  After lunch, I arranged for one of the doormen to walk me to my parking garage. His shift ended at 3:00 p.m., which worked out perfectly. I drove my usual route along the Hutchinson River Parkway, keeping a sharp eye on the rearview mirror, but darted onto I-684 at the last second. The entrance ramp twisted and turned onto a straightaway. I gunned the engine on my vintage Porsche 911 through the curve and then ducked into the right-hand lane and slowed down to fifty-five. Every single car passed me for the next ten miles. I didn’t recognize any of them, and I didn’t see anyone following me either.

  Not that it mattered. By now it was early rush hour. Cars hugged each other’s bumpers while cruising at the speed limit. Donnie may have gotten away with lifting me off a dimly lit New York street at midnight, but he wasn’t going to be able to pull it off on the highway. The streets of Hartford would be an altogether different matter. It was going to be up to me to be prudent and cautious.

  I knew he would be informed of my arrival because he somehow knew the details of the questions I’d asked Roxanne Stashinski at my godfather’s funeral reception. Word would get around that I was back. It was a small community, and people talked. There was always the possibility that Roxy herself had betrayed me to Donnie Angel, or gossiped innocently to someone about the questions I’d asked her. But I doubted it. She had no motive, and I’d known her my entire life. I trusted her as much as anyone outside my family, though that wasn’t saying all that much.

  Roxy was my godfather’s niece. She was also my best friend growing up. We’d gone to summer PLAST camps together, and attended Ukrainian School at night until she quit after the seventh grade. Her mother had studied ballet and she’d inherited her long, lithe frame and feline features. As a kid, I’d wished I looked more like her, but mostly I wished I’d fit in as well. Everyone thought Roxy was cool, at Uke camps and at American school. It helped that she was thin and did the kinds of things cool girls did, like smoke cigarettes and experiment with drugs.

  Her popularity with boys, in fact, was the beginning of the end of our childhood friendship. During our last PLAST camp together, she turned cold and stopped being friends with me. Something had changed but I didn’t know what, until I caught her giving a blow job to a sixteen-year-old boy from Brooklyn in the tall grass behind the propane tank. We were fourteen at the time.

  Twenty years later she had the life every immigrant coveted for his child. She was married to a full-blooded Ukrainian and had two kids. He was a contractor, she was a homemaker, and when they went to church on Sunday, they
were the envy of every parent whose children had either left or married outside the culture.

  We’d rekindled our friendship five years ago when I’d married her brother.

  I picked her up at a car wash two blocks away from the Ukrainian National Home, where she’d been cooking with the other Uke ladies in preparation for bingo night. She was frowning even before she pulled the passenger door open. She still sported killer legs in tight jeans but her face resembled a shrunken raisin. It reminded me of what some famous actress had once said: that as she aged, a woman had to decide whether to preserve her ass or her face. She couldn’t keep both. I guess that’s one of the things I’d always liked about Roxy. We were both flawed. Neither of us was pedestal material.

  “The car wash? Really?” Roxy said.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll explain. Get in. Quick.”

  I looked around to see if my favorite van had arrived, or if a crazed man in cleats was running toward me with a mallet in his hands. Such was my state of mind since last night.

  Roxy threw her bag in behind her and climbed in the car. She held what looked like a plate covered by a paper bag in her hands. The delicious smell of fried potatoes and onions hit me. I didn’t wait for her to put her seat belt on. Instead I slammed the car into first and took off.

  “Hey,” Roxy said, her head snapping back from the torque. “What the . . .” She whipped her seat belt across her shoulder and snapped it in place. “I need to be back in an hour but you’re taking that way too seriously.”

  I took off down Wethersfield Avenue and veered right onto Brown Street. The tires screeched. Roxy gripped the overhead handle. “What’s going on? Am I missing something?”