Sophie’s Last Stand

by Nancy Bartholomew

  I attempted to keep swinging but couldn’t move. It took two people to hold me back, Gray and my new yard girl, Della, who had somehow materialized out of nowhere and was hanging on to me with a surprisingly strong grip.

  Wendell Arrow was likewise engaged, holding back a snarling Darlene, who had somehow lost complete touch with her Buddhist, nonviolent side and was attempting to hurl herself onto the disoriented FBI agent.

  As I watched, Darlene suddenly shrieked and began kicking violently. “He’s biting me! He’s biting me! Get off me, you mangy hound!”

  Della’s dog, Durrell, apparently thinking Darlene posed a threat to his mistress, was hanging by the hem of Darlene’s broomstick skirt, tugging for dear life and growling like a menacing guard dog.

  Somehow the sight of Della’s mutt earnestly attacking my sister’s skirt forced me back into a more sensible frame of mind. Both of us were engaging in a pointless battle and neither of us could do much to prevent the actions of our perceived enemies. If Agent Cole wanted to hunt me in her pursuit of Nick, well, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, except prove her wrong. And I could only prove her wrong by either finding Nick or finding his missing “information.”

  I watched as Agent Cole picked herself up off the ground without any help. She looked at me with a murderous glare and seemed about to make a move when Gray Evans spoke up.

  “I’ll handle this,” he said. “Finish up and leave. We’ll talk later.”

  “I want her charged,” Agent Cole spat, her eyes glittering dangerously.

  “Rethink that,” Gray said. His voice was deceptively calm but it didn’t match the determined look he gave the agent. “I’ll get back to you.”

  She seemed disinclined to take an order from a local cop, but was interrupted before she could speak by an agent who’d stepped out of the house and onto my front porch.

  “Cole,” he called, holding up a cell phone. “It’s Regional. Says it’s urgent.”

  She scowled at Gray, turned and slowly walked up the brick pathway to the porch, snatched the phone from the agent’s hand and disappeared inside the house.

  Gray murmured, “You’re lucky. She could lock you up for that.”

  “Let her!” I said, brushing his hands off my arms. “Let her try!”

  Darlene mimicked my body language to Wendell. “Yeah,” she said. “Let her try!”

  Della had pulled Durrell away from Darlene’s skirt and was now watching me, waiting for an opportunity to speak where the others couldn’t hear her. She walked Durrell around behind me and leaned close as she passed.

  “You don’t wanna mess with them people,” she murmured. “They don’t always play by the rules.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No shit.”

  Della shrugged apologetically. “I wouldn’t have interfered otherwise,” she said. “I just didn’t want you guys getting the short end of the stick. I mean, you are my paycheck.”

  “That dog is a menace!” Darlene snapped.

  “He was only doing what he thought was right,” Della said.

  Durrell growled, but when I looked at him he was grinning. The dog was toying with Darlene, who seemed to take him very seriously.

  “Damn thing probably has rabies,” she said. “I don’t suppose he’s had his shots, has he?”

  Della hesitated. “Well, sure he has,” she answered, but she didn’t sound very convincing.

  I glanced at Darlene’s leg and saw that Durrell had only torn her skirt, not actually bitten my sister. “Just go on back to work, Della. My sister’s fine.” I gave Darlene a look and moved to block her view of Durrell and his owner. If Della lingered, Darlene would be asking for proof and that would only lead to disaster, as I was almost certain Durrell hadn’t seen a vet in recent history.

  Gray and his partner had moved away from us to stand on the sidewalk next to Gray’s Tahoe. Gray held a cell phone to his ear and seemed to be having a heated conversation with the person on the other end. Wendell’s attention seemed split between his partner and my front porch, where FBI agents were emerging from the house empty-handed. As the team began walking down the front steps, Wendell nudged Gray and motioned toward the agents.

  Agent Cole led her people down the walkway, ignoring me and seeming to focus on the line of black sedans parked in front of the house. I had the ridiculous urge to jump out at her, just to see her reaction, but managed to stay where I was. How could these people think I had anything at all to do with concealing evidence in an FBI agent’s murder? In any murder, for that matter?

  “Hey,” Darlene said suddenly, “I just thought of something. I bet I know why they’re here. That girl in the backyard, she’s the agent. That’s why they searched the house. They think Nick whacked her and then hid the murder weapon in the house or something!”

  I rolled my eyes, barely restraining myself from giving my sister a head whap.

  “Darlene, that girl was no FBI agent.”

  She nodded, giving me her patronizing, know-it-all smile. “That’s how they do it, Sophie. They disguise themselves so your regular John Q. Citizen doesn’t have so much as an inkling of their true identity.” My sister shook her head, closed her eyes and sighed. “The pain those people must go through, the attention to detail. You got to admire their dedication, Sophie.”

  “I’m telling you, Darlene, nobody goes to that much trouble to fit into a situation. The girl had tattoos on her hands. Tattoos are forever, Darlene.”

  My sister opened her eyes and smirked. “Temporary, Sophie. They do it all the time. And her haircut, just another indication of her attention to detail. No, that’s not what impresses me. What gets me about her is she was willing to pump her tits up to a double D cup, all for the job. You know that’s what they call it, don’t you, ‘The Job’?” Darlene sighed. “That surgery’s painful, Soph. You gotta wrap them puppies up tight for two weeks. I should know….”

  “Oh please, Darlene, don’t tell me! You should know because you’re a professional therapist, right?”

  Darlene looked wounded. “No, Sophie. I know because Patrice Rodantini’s boyfriend paid for her to have it done and she said there wasn’t any man on earth worth enough to make her go through that kind of pain again, and she’s had four kids! They split you in half when you have kids, Sophie, and still Patrice thought her D cups hurt worse!”

  I considered kneeling down and banging my forehead against the concrete driveway.

  My sister sniffed, her attention turning now toward Wendell Arrow as he and Gray slowly began walking toward us.

  “Of course,” she murmured, “there are some men who’ll just drive you to do anything for them.” She was smiling now, that stupid, simpering, on-the-market smile I call The Husband Catcher smile.

  “They all have their little weaknesses, the poor dears,” she said softly.

  “Patrice tell you that one, too?” I asked.

  Darlene flashed me her “go to hell!” look. “No, Sophie. That one I know from three marriages and because I am, above all else, a trained professional therapist!”

  Chapter 6

  Pa spent most of his life in the dark. He worked third shift at the naval shipyard, leaving home after we were all in bed and returning most mornings before dawn. He worked on the huge, gray ships, spending most of his time buried deep in their depths. The only colors in Pa’s world back then were the sparks that flew between his welding iron and the red-hot metal before him. Was it any wonder that he dreamed of blue skies, water and sunshine?

  The day after Pa retired, my parents moved to North Carolina. At first, none of us kids understood. How could our parents leave the only world we had ever known? How could they turn their backs on the house we grew up in and leave the relatives and friends from the old neighborhood? How could they leave us? We just couldn’t figure it out, and then, one by one, we followed them, at first to visit and then to live. It was the magic of light and color that bewitched us.

  Pa sits with Ma and eats his breakfast
each morning on a sunporch overlooking the canal that leads out to the Neuse River and Pamlico Sound. He smiles and touches Ma’s hand. “Look at that,” he says to her, as if it were suddenly all new again. “Now this is what they mean when they talk about the American Dream,” he says. “This is what life is supposed to be about, eh?”

  Pa and his new cronies take to their powerboats and the river most mornings, motoring along in a loose convoy that will end with coffee, conversation and a doughnut at the marina. They gather, a pack of bandy-legged old men, to discuss the woes of the world and how it was all done so much better in their day.

  “I’m going to see the old guys,” Pa said to me when I first came to visit. “They need my help this morning.” This was always followed by details. “Mort’s wife is too sick to drive him to his colonoscopy.” Or “Dave don’t know how to switch out the motor mounts on his engine.”

  I would nod, thinking how nice it was they had such expertise. It only took a few days to realize that it was much more important that they had each other. “Old age ain’t for sissies,” Pa said, echoing the common sentiment. “We gotta hang tough.”

  When I told Gray about Pa, he smiled and nodded, as if this was the only way to approach aging. We left Della and the carpenter working in the afternoon sunshine and drove the seven miles out of town to my parents’ development without ever discussing the events of the past twenty-four hours. The FBI search of the house, the body in the backyard and my torched Honda were put on a very temporary and tenuous hold as we went through the motions of having a normal family evening.

  I needed to occupy myself with routine activity so that my unconscious mind could mull over the topic of Nick and what I would need to do to get rid of him and the problems that haunted me wherever I went. Gray seemed to pick up on this instinctively and was content to drive out to my parents’ home without once asking any of the questions I knew would come later.

  He pulled into my parents’ driveway and nodded as he stepped out of his Tahoe, surveying my parents’ house and yard, as if this were all as he expected.

  When Pa came to the door, Gray shook his hand, saying, “Nice place you got here. Is that a Sportfish docked out back?”

  Pa smiled. “After dinner,” he said, “I’ll show you.”

  Joey appeared in the doorway behind Pa, his face breaking into a wide smile as he saw us.

  “What? You’re not gonna let them in, Pa?”

  Behind my brother I could hear the sounds of Joey’s children laughing and calling to each other while their mother, Angela, tried to calm them, her voice a soft contrast to my brother’s. There were other voices, Wendell, Darlene and Ma, and the smells of home—sweet tomato sauce, fresh sourdough bread, oregano and garlic.

  I looked at Gray to see if I could read his reaction, wondering what it was like to be a newcomer among such chaos. But he was watching me. The blue-gray eyes sparkled and the tiny lines appeared at the sides of his mouth as he smiled.

  “So this is you,” he said, nodding toward the family room and past the children into the kitchen. “Yeah, it fits.”

  Joey broke the moment, pulling Gray into the center of his family and making the introductions. I poured a glass of Chianti and stood back, watching. I could still hear the reminder in a distant recess of my mind, whispering “like a fish needs a bicycle,” but I was too far gone to pay much attention. I just wanted to keep the moment as it was, even if it only lasted this one night.

  Joey walked up after a while and stood beside me, looking on as Gray noticed Angela setting the table and went to help.

  “So,” Joey said, “you like this guy, right?”

  “Joey, I don’t even know him.”

  My brother scoffed. “What’s to know? He’s a good guy. What, you gotta have his life history and résumé before you know if you like what you see?”

  “Joey, come on.”

  Joey knew how I felt. I never had to say a word. He knew how I felt about Nick and he could read how I felt about Gray. Still, I wasn’t ready to commit myself. There’s something about saying the words out loud that dooms you to your admissions.

  “He’s a nice man treating me nice because he knows you,” I finally said.

  “Bullshit!” Joey said. “You like him, he likes you. This ain’t no science project.”

  “What, Joey?” I said, turning away from the dining room to glare at him. “You following Darlene now? You think it’s fate, my destiny to be with this man?”

  Joey shrugged. “All’s I’m saying is give him a chance. Don’t write him off on account of you think you’re a loser so you’re quitting the game before they even draw up the teams.”

  “Mangiamo!” Ma cried, walking from the kitchen to the dining room with a steaming platter of braciola. “Everybody, come on!”

  She set the platter of stuffed flank steak in front of Pa’s place at the head of the long oak table, the table that had been in our family since the first Mazaratti stepped foot in America. Platter after fragrant platter emerged from Ma’s sanctuary and was placed on the white lace tablecloth.

  Darlene sat like a queen holding court in the middle of us, with a dazed but pleased-looking Wendell beside her. She attempted at least twice during the meal to pump Wendell and Gray about the car bombing, the FBI and the murder. The first time, she said, “About that body,” but Joey cut her off before she could go any further.

  “Marone a mia, Darlene, have some respect, there are children here. This is dinner. What is wrong with you?”

  Wendell smiled indulgently at my sister and Gray ignored her.

  Darlene looked sufficiently chastised, a first for her in my opinion, but five minutes later she was at it again. “How exactly do you torch a car?” she asked, her voice pitched to sound innocent, but I knew my sister and innocence had nothing to do with each other.

  “Darlene!” Pa said, warning her off the topic.

  “Okay,” she said, “be that way. I was just trying to make conversation. How about this—how do you become an FBI agent? Do you think they need any trained professional therapists?”

  Joey looked at me and rolled his eyes. When I glanced at Gray, I noticed he hid a grin behind his white linen napkin. Ma grabbed a wooden spoon right out of the pasta e cece and attempted to reach Darlene, but she was safely out of range and the swat fell short, landing on Joey.

  “Ma, would you watch with that?” he cried, nursing an imaginary bump on the top of his balding head. “I’m trying to grow hair here.”

  We all laughed, lulled by Chianti and too much good food. The daylight began to fade and as it did the candles on Ma’s table bathed the room in a soft golden glow. Long after the children had excused themselves and wandered outside to play, we sat there listening to my parents tell stories from the old days.

  When we all finally rose from the table and said our goodbyes, it was after ten o’clock. As Gray pulled out of the driveway and into the street, a satisfied sigh escaped his lips. “That was wonderful,” he said. Even without looking over at him, I could feel him smiling in the dark. “Does your mother always cook like that?”

  I laughed. “You charmed her this morning,” I said. “She lives to feed people, but for you, she went all out.”

  “I don’t think I will ever forget that meal,” he said, starting to slip into his bad Italian accent. “I think I can feel my blood turning Italian even as we speak. Look at me,” he said. “I’ve got red sauce everywhere. I even look Italian now, don’t I?”

  I laughed at him and we drove on, crossing the span of bridges that looked like three spaghetti noodles swooping down on the twinkling lights that marked my new hometown. For a few hours I had lived in a dream world again, where people actually got fresh starts, where no one remembers you for your mistakes, and where good memories are the only ones that last.

  When he pulled up in front of my house, Gray cut the engine and came around to open my door. In his right hand he held a long-handled, police-issue Maglite.

  “Yo
u’d think there’d be streetlights out here,” he said, shining the beam on the ground in front of us.

  I pointed toward the post at the end of my driveway. “The heat from the fire must’ve popped the bulb.” But I wasn’t focused on the light. I was feeling the nearness of him and wondering what would happen when we reached my front door.

  Gray took my hand, pulling me from the car and then guiding me onto the sidewalk. The contact made my head work overtime. Would he try to kiss me good-night? I imagined everything—the way he would take me in his arms and hold me, the strong reassurance of his chest as I leaned into him, the taste of his lips, the smell of him. I was driving myself crazy, and yet I couldn’t stop.

  I heard myself saying, “It’s been a lovely evening. Good night.” But the words never left my head. For some reason, I just couldn’t let go of his hand, not just yet. I would make myself let go, really, I would. Because this was so wrong, for so many reasons.

  We walked silently past my burned out car and up the steps to the front porch. My heart was banging against my chest and I was almost certain he could hear it. If not, then he could certainly feel the way my body trembled. Where had the self-possessed Sophie Mazaratti gone? And who was this silly girl that seemed to be left behind in Sophie’s body?

  It was totally dark. The humid air hung thick and damp over the neighborhood, making me long for air conditioning and a cold drink. In the distance, heat lightning flashed and a low rumble of thunder followed, then continued, growing louder as Gray and I approached the front door.

  “What the hell?” he said, and moved his flashlight in the direction of the noise. Durrell the dog stood blinking and baring his teeth in the harsh glare.

  “Durrell,” I said softly, “what are you doing here?” I stooped down and held out my hand. The dog’s tail began to thump on the wooden floor and he stood, attempting to walk toward me, but yelping as he moved.