by Shannon Kirk
“Go to sleep, Jo-Jo. We’ll talk in the morning.”
I tuck her in, like I always do, or she always does for me. As I kiss her hairline, I take and extinguish her lit cigarette and gather the remaining pack. I skid across the high shine of the pine floor and place the half pack in the jewelry drawer, which sits like a cherry on a cake, top center on the coral dresser. I gather the spent bottles of bordeaux—somehow she drained two on her own today. I’ll hide the rest of the case so I can at least have a half glass, perhaps save a sip or two for myself—she’ll drink, I’ll sip, tomorrow night. I work the evening shift tomorrow, so I’ll bury the bottles in my house good and deep—behind the false bookcase to the secret wine room.
Johanna doesn’t have a formal job to worry about, but she is supposed to be orchestrating the Mighty Mary charitable trust gala our family hosts every year at the Saleo Country Club. Shit. That’s in three days. It feels so far off, and it seems, how odd, I won’t make it to my own event. Feels like insurmountable mountains of stress and horror and reality lie between me and the event. I hope Johanna has the arrangements settled, the caterer squared off, like she always does. If all Johanna has scheduled tomorrow is a liquid lunch with the valet captain to ensure the Rolls-Royces are parked just so, she still needs to make decisions and be somewhat functional. So I’m shutting her down for the night.
Mop isn’t back from Princeton for another few days, so I have this time to unravel for Johanna. Time for Johanna to patch me back up.
I trip on her absurd animal-print Tory Burch flats on the way out of her shingle-shake cottage, so I scoot them under the sand-dollar couch—sand dollars embroidered in blue against the couch’s ivory. Johanna and I have the same size feet, but we definitely do not share shoes. I’m a nurse and often in white Naturalizers; she’s a glamour girl in prints and colors and couture. At charity galas, I wear classic black spikes; she’s in items designers make once and only for her, so it will say so under her picture’s caption on the society page of Northshore magazine. The animal-print Tory Burch I scoot under the couch must snag Popover. From under the nether regions of the third cushion comes an angry meow from the gray shorthair with lime eyes who travels everywhere with Johanna. Everyone’s pissing me off today, so I pull-slam the door in response to Popover. Damn cat. Damn everyone.
How do I make any sense of this day? I’m a nurse. I’ve seen death many times. I’m numb to it, immune. But I am not numb to murder. I am not numb to madness. I don’t know how to clear this fog I’m in. He hasn’t called me. I’m too afraid to ring him. Won’t email him. Actually, neither of us text or use email anyway. Our lives are medical, and the height of our technology is inputting patient stats into electronic records. I use the internet to check the tide schedule and weather, maybe copy some recipes; no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. I garden and paint and sometimes land a supporting role in the Gloucester Theater in my free time. So there is no electronic trail of our affair for her to find, at least as far as I know. The Kisstop room we use, he expenses to the hospital, which is another story. And still, I have a growing fear she’s figured us out. I should never have whispered in her ear at Proserpina’s. I’m forty-three; I know better.
His name is Dr. Kent Dranal. Her name is Cate Dranal. The Dranals. A terrible last name. If I were to ever marry him, which as I clear an inch of my mind fog I realize I never will, I’d keep Vandonbeer as my last name. Dranal, banal, anal—I can hear the schoolhouse taunts. What was I thinking falling for a man with a name like that? Huge mistake saying his name to Johanna, because speaking it led to her laughing fit and a three-second swallow straight from the mouth of the bordeaux.
She sang, “Dranal is an anal, banal anal, anal ass, ass, ass.”
If she only knew.
And now she’s passed out in the guest cottage, and I’m alone with my thoughts, walking along the flower path in the backyard to my rose house. The solar lights in the perennial beds, the twinkle lights in the trees, illuminate my way. I pass my barn to the side, snaking a finger on the clapboards of the small room addition. I peek in the window and notice the overhead on in the side room, which was supposed to be an all-year potting shed but isn’t any longer. No light should be on. I hear a footstep within. I shake.
Maybe just the wind or one of those coyotes. Maybe Johanna worked in there today and left the light on.
I’ve lived on this property my adult life by myself, no full-time man protecting me. I can handle security. I must handle security. I can’t be the cause, again, of someone’s death. Oh, Daddy, I’m sorry. I miss you. Stop. What’s that? That’s definitely a footstep in the barn.
A sliver of a shiver crackles up my spine, and I freeze on the spot. An ocean wind of wet salt air, humid and sticky, swipes my cheeks in passing. I paste my body against the barn’s siding and walk on tender feet to the back of the barn. My WeedWacker leans beside the secret back entrance, which appears like the rest of the backside and not like a doorway at all. I grab the WeedWacker and hold it like a fighting lance as I enter the barn. Stalling once inside, I plant my feet and bend my knees, like I’m some warrior. As if a forty-something woman holding the right posture is surefire self-defense. The tea-length, poly-blend skirt and inner slip of my nursing uniform restrict the width of my crouch.
I see no moving shadows. I hear no shifting feet. I freeze within, wait for some breath from some corner, but nothing. The light in the barn’s sidesaddle of a room crackles and dims and brightens in a soft amber with every blow of New England wind. I decide it’s safe to move on to the light that should not be on. Still holding my WeedWacker like a lance, I’m halfway through the middle of the barn, which used to house horses. Under the high roof, you could park two tractors in the center and four horses in side stalls if you wanted. I converted the stalls to different crafting and construction purposes: one stall with my construction tools, saw, hammer, hatchet, etc.; one for making sea-glass sculptures, for Johanna; one for potting and gardening; and one for the stuff of painting ocean landscapes—easel, brushes, oils, acrylics. There’s a pin light on in the sea-glass stall, a tiny desk lamp Johanna keeps there. From the outside, I hadn’t appreciated this light was on too. In moving to the sea-glass stall, I swear another footfall creeps behind me, but when I turn, I note the noise is the bang of the false board that serves as the incognito back door, which I left open, so it creaks now in the wind.
Using my WeedWacker as a cane, I brace and bend to inspect the top of the sea-glass stall’s workbench. Under the pin light, I see Johanna laid two sea-weathered, cobalt-blue bottle bottoms, both of which are so pitted and smooth they likely spent a century rubbing against the seafloor, against the coastline, gritted by sea salt. Truly rare pieces. She has out her copper wire, sterling silver, a foundry crucible for melting the silver, crucible tongs, a blowtorch, and wire cutters. Set to the side is another bottle of bordeaux, which pins in place hand-drawn sketches of the design she intends to paint on each bottle-bottom necklace. One sketch is of a heart with the cursive word Sisters.
The other sketch is an infinity sign with the cursive words love forever.
Beside the infinity “love forever” drawing, Johanna left a note card that says, For my beautiful Mop, I love you forever. I know Mop. She will never take this necklace off once it’s finished. How deep she loves her mother, a fathomless well of love. Would my own child look at me like Mop does Johanna? Doesn’t Mop look at me, too, like that? Don’t I deserve it, don’t I? She’s more like me, more like me. Stop. Stop it. Love is not exclusive. Stop. Stop thinking and look around in the barn for the noise you heard. Security. Make sure everyone is safe.
This third bottle of bordeaux is half-full: Johanna must have stumbled away from it and forgotten. Oh, Jo-Jo. So that’s what you were doing all day. I picture her in the day’s summer sun, her white sundress, her big floppy hat, barefoot with flamingo-pink toes like the wild sea girl she still is inside. I imagine her snaking her way along Haddock Point’s curvy, rocky edge, scavengi
ng for perfect sea-glass pieces to add to her collections and projects. She’s been hunting blue sea glass our whole lives.
I shut off the workbench lamp and take a short swig of the bordeaux. At this point, it’s better I calm my nerves, despite my state.
There are more shadows now in the center of the barn. My side room’s amber overhead still pulses, and on each undulation, shadows move. Another creak of the false door in the back bangs, but this time, I’m sure, I hear a scamper of feet outside.
I run into the lit side room to look out the window there, and when I do, I catch a glimpse of a shadow, nothing more, moving in the driveway, low to the ground. Once past my black Audi, beside which the black wisp of shadow further ambiguates, whatever is running disappears. I can’t make out what it is, but it appears blockish, bent, possibly on all fours, maybe, so I presume a deer, a neighborhood dog, something large. I’ll call animal control in the morning to check the prints.
I stand in the side room, the amber light pressing in on me like a warping trap. I crash the WeedWacker to the floor when I realize the ominous change in here. I slap myself, strain for my senses to come alive and make sense of things. Am I really seeing what I’m seeing? I witnessed a murder today. I witnessed a murder today. I witnessed a murder today. Am I in shock? I know the signs of shock. I am a nurse. And I believe I can diagnose: I am in shock. All the signs are here. I haven’t talked about it yet. Mold clouds cover my tongue, scratchy, fibrous, and tasting of gray. I’ve gone about my evening in a haze. Haven’t changed from my nursing uniform. Haven’t called authorities. I’m walking in a barn chasing sounds and shadows. I need help. I need help. What do I do? Am I really seeing what I’m seeing in this room?
I try to swallow the strangeness in my life. From this room, he, Kent Dranal, took something she, Cate Dranal, bungled upon when she rooted through his Jeep, and thereafter extorted her own husband with the knowledge, and thus, by doing so, extorted me by proxy. She has no clue I’m the source of the vials of pentobarbital Kent took from this room, vowing to rid them for me through some obscure back channels, alleviating me of their possession. He wouldn’t confess to her where he got them; he let her hold the vials over his head and extort him into staying with her. But he promised last week that he was done, that he’d take the consequences and protect me, protect us. We’d be together no matter what, he said.
Thing is, Kent didn’t get all the vials.
Instead of clay pots and heat lamps and seeds and bags of fertilizer that I intended take the space of this side room, there’s a medical bed, a heart monitor, an EEG machine, a couple of drip lines and holders, a generator, a heating and cooling unit, a sterilizer, syringes, blood pressure cuff, and under a floorboard under the bed, there should be more vials of the pentobarbital that Kent Dranal, my lover, the surgeon, thinks he rid me of. But he only got the vials I kept up top.
All this equipment and medical devices and paraphernalia, lots of gauze, too, all innocently gained. A little while ago, I worked a private nursing job in Manchester-by-the-Sea, on an estate called Willow, and when my private patient survived and revived, the estate gave me the contents of their homemade hospital room, suggesting I offer private services to others of their kind: wealthy New Englanders who scoff the brutal lighting and freezing cold of hospital wings. I don’t know why I didn’t decline. To make matters worse, in flagrant apathy of drug laws—the people of Willow acted above the law—they gifted a case of pentobarbital too. I should have turned it in. I didn’t. I just didn’t think it would ever lead to anything malicious. Pentobarbital is a Schedule II controlled substance, used to induce comas. At the right dose, some states use it on death row. We’re not talking about an unfinished pack of Cipro you lend a friend for her sniffles.
So now I’m looking around this strange medical room in my barn, the light on, by—I had presumed—Johanna, and I wonder, as my eyes focus, my brain haze clears or muddles more, I wonder why . . . Yes, why the floorboard under the medical bed, under which the remaining pentobarbital should be stashed, is now leaning against the white metal cabinet. I hand-and-knee to the floor to inspect under the bed. The underguts of the barn’s crawl space: empty. No vials. No nothing.
That was no shadow. No animal.
I race back to Johanna in the guest cottage.
CHAPTER FIVE
AUNTY LIV
Two years ago
I just found the floorboard disturbed in the side room of my barn. All my stashed pentobarbital is gone. I’m racing back to Johanna’s guest cottage. Someone took the vials, and they must mean harm. That someone has to be Cate Dranal, Kent’s wife, who killed Vicky today and knew about at least part of the vials. I’m spiraling in these thoughts. Had to be Cate who snuck in here, which means she knows about me. I should never have whispered in her ear.
I reach the cottage and at first can’t open the door. It’s barred. No, it’s not barred, you’re pulling, but you should be pushing. Slow down. Calm down. I’m so outright flustered and freaked, I’m not breathing. Stop. Breathe. Breathe. Turn the knob, push. I turn the knob and push. I am a nurse. I am better at panic. I’m better at panic when I am a nurse. I open the door and am afforded a quick relief.
My sister is snoring like a fat man after a turkey and a ball game and a trough of Bud.
But now that I know she’s safe, relief leaves. I must protect her from whoever came here. I don’t know what to do. I can’t let her be harmed, like I let Daddy be harmed. Johanna’s my love, my light. Oh, Johanna. I’m scared, darling. I can’t care for Mop on my own, I need you here, too, I do.
Popover scowl-meows at me from the sand-dollar couch, and I won’t sleep at all tonight.
I’m going to sit next to Popover on the couch. We’ll both stand guard over Johanna, all night, forever.
Cate Dranal took my pentobarbital. She knows about me. What do I do? I haven’t heard from Kent. Had to be her. She was in my barn. Where else has she been? In the house? What is she going to do? I need to call the cops.
I check my phone. No calls from Kent. I press nine, hover my finger over one, intending to hit twice, but can’t. They’ll frame me for Vicky’s murder; Cate will say I leaned over the booth and dusted peanuts when they both went to the bathroom. The cops won’t care that I have no clue about Vicky or her allergies. I’ll be framed. That’s irrational. Doesn’t matter how irrational. There’s no video at Proserpina’s—I heard the bartender telling the cops, and I’ve heard before, on other nights. Doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to prove my innocence or framed guilt. Cate’s word against mine. Don’t call. Don’t call just yet. Think. Calm down. You’re irrational. Wait for Johanna, she’ll settle some reason. Keep this with Johanna, keep your cool, keep your job, keep Mop’s trust, keep it together. Stay straight. Stick to the facts.
And also, if I call the cops, I’ll have to admit to my good-gotten but ill-kept drugs. At best, I’ll lose my nursing license and reputation for having the pentobarbital in the first place. Call the cops. You should call the cops. I can’t call the cops. I’ll go to work tomorrow. What if they jail me for the drugs? What has Cate done with the vials? Will I be framed for something else too? What? Talk to Kent. You need to talk to Kent. Where the hell is Kent? Call him. No, don’t you call him. I’ll be a nurse tomorrow and settle on a better plan.
I’m talking to myself in first and third person, which I’ve never done before. Yes, you have. Four other times you can recall, in fact, and likely more. When you let your father die. When you couldn’t carry your first child. When you couldn’t carry your second. When you discovered Sister Mary’s secret and couldn’t contain your outburst, your jealousy. Stop. Stop. This is different. This is different. Am I mad? I’m not mad. Scared and aimless is all. Don’t know what to do. I just need to get through this night. Tomorrow will be clear, and I will figure this out.
I sit and I stare and I pace and I inspect every window in this night cottage upon every creak of every tree. The light is a warping loneliness, shadowed
in sinister evil in spots irrelevant in daytime. I sound like Mop. It’s just night, no evil. Stop freaking out, it’s just night, no evil. The blotch of black light on the floor by the heater vent is a hand reaching for me from hell. Stop it. The shape in the corner behind the puffy chair is Cate Dranal, standing still and silent, a shape-shifting shadow. I push an umbrella into the shadow’s stomach and prove what I know: the night is the devil. As in, there is no being that is the devil. No. The devil is indeed the night.
Now I really sound like Mop. Equating intangible things with intangible things, dramatizing shadows into sinister beings, and anthropomorphizing objects and moving air. All of which would be fine if I could conjure and then deny such thoughts, like her.
Get a grip!
Be rational.
Think like a nurse.
Get through the night.
I need some sleep. My eyes droop, but then another sinister footstep outside, which I must inspect. I find nothing but the big maple in the corner of the cottage’s postage-stamp yard. Big Boy, as we call the maple when we tap him for syrup, aches in the wind, which pushes the wood-plank swing into the brambles behind and forward toward the cottage door. I watch the swing swing for a ghost, spotlit by moonlight. I wish I was dealing with just a ghost. A ghost would be easier than this, whatever this is.
Maybe I’ll sleep from morning until noon, after Johanna wakes. I return to the sand-dollar couch.
I curl my legs into my chest and cram my back into the side arm, giving me perfect view of all four windows, the bathroom to my right, in which I dialed the overhead to the highest blazing-sun setting, and the door in my sight line down the wall on my left, against which I rest my head. Only the coral dresser with the cherry-on-cake drawer, which holds Johanna’s Marlboros, obstructs my view of the door handle, but not the door. Not the door. I can see the door. The door is locked.
