by M. R. Carey
“He never touches us. It’s just the things he says. The way he is. Even Jamie sees it. She spends half the time apologizing for him and the other half telling him to shut up.”
Liz contemplated that sentence, amazed and chagrined. Her own conversations with Marc had never gotten close to such a frank exchange of views. Jamie must have something she didn’t. Balls, maybe. Or self-respect.
“We’ll have to see what happens in court,” she said. “Maybe you’ll see less of him now.”
Especially if he does time for assault.
“Can I talk? In court, I mean? Can I say what I think of him?”
Her instincts recoiled from that proposition. Even if Marc’s rights of access were curtailed, there was no way of cutting him out of their lives altogether. And say what I think of him sounded kind of irrevocable.
“I don’t know,” she temporized. “I’ll ask. But most likely it will just be about what happened tonight.”
“It should be about everything. It should be about us as a family.”
She could tell by Zac’s tone that the us in that sentence took in himself, his sister and her and left Marc and Jamie off somewhere else. She was a little ashamed of how happy that made her. Whatever Marc had done to her, Jamie seemed to be a sweet girl and it sounded like she was fighting the kids’ corner when it needed to be fought. She didn’t deserve to be landed in the middle of all this.
“We’ll be a family no matter what happens,” she promised. “I love you, Zac.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“I’ll be home soon. But don’t stay up.”
“I am definitely staying up,” he told her.
But when she finally got in at around 11:30—having taken two buses, because it turned out they only let you ride in an ambulance if you actually needed one and not having the cab fare didn’t count as a reason—he was asleep on the sofa in the family room. She tiptoed past without waking him, then tiptoed back to put a blanket over him and woke him anyway.
“Hey, Mom,” he murmured, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes in a way that made him look much younger than his sixteen years.
“Hey. You look like mice made a nest in your hair then moved to a better neighborhood.”
Zac grinned reluctantly. He had never been able to resist the challenge of a yo mama contest with his actual mom. “You look like someone scooped out your face with an ice cream scoop, turned it upside down and put it back in,” he riposted. Then he said, “I want to know what happened. All of it.”
So she told him, speaking very low so as not to wake Molly. He held her hand while she talked, and after she’d finished they hugged for a long time, their foreheads touching.
“You remember that story you told us?” he asked her. “About when you were in the band, and you bought that crazy effects unit?”
Liz had to think for a moment. More recent memories loomed large enough to blot out everything else. She laughed when she remembered. “The Strange Device,” she said. “Sure.”
What made that a story was that the Strange Device had been given to her by a devoted fan who said it would revolutionize her playing. It was suitcase-sized and opened like a cupboard. Inside it were four foot-pedals that could be locked down by stepping on them once and released again with another tap of the foot. There were also lights around the edge of the case that pulsed rhythmically whenever the damn thing was turned on. The effects were awful, but Liz had carted the stupid thing from venue to venue and displayed it prominently onstage because the guy who gave it to her was sure to come and see the Sideways Smile play at least one gig in three. She just couldn’t bear to break his heart.
“You said you nearly got a hernia carrying that box around,” Zac reminded her.
“It’s true. It weighed a ton. Are you drawing an analogy here, Zac?”
“I guess I am.”
“About the overuse of electronic effects in rock music?”
“About ditching something if it’s doing you no good and even hurting you.”
He was staring at her very hard and very seriously. She leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. “Your dad’s not going to hurt me again,” she told him. “I won’t let him. You’ve got my word on that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay then. Go. Sleep. You’ll be a zombie in the morning.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you,” Liz said. “You and Moll are my whole world.” It was the simple truth. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep them safe and to keep them together.
Zac went off to bed at last, visibly staggering, and Liz went into the kitchen to clear up the mess there. Zac had picked up all the fallen groceries, but he was deathly squeamish and hadn’t even attempted to tackle the bloodstains on the floor or the furniture. Seeing them again now brought the whole experience back to Liz with terrifying clarity. The feeling of being a passive observer of her own body, forced into the passenger seat as it moved of its own accord.
Was she going mad? Or just trying to duck the responsibility for what she’d done? But that made no sense because she didn’t regret it. She was absolutely certain she would be dead now if she hadn’t hit back at Marc when she did. She couldn’t conceive which part of her had found the strength to resist him, but she wasn’t trying to get any distance from it. God, she wished it had shown itself sooner. A whole lot of bad shit might never have happened.
But then again, neither would Zac and Molly. Whatever she thought of the choices she made, they were the counterbalance that kept her from wishing for what might have been. Any world that didn’t have them in it wasn’t worth living in.
The second time was different.
Liz had been afraid at first, and very much on her guard, but three weeks of business as usual had disarmed her fears. Her cuts had healed nicely. Beebee had called to say that the police were pressing charges of assault against Marc. He was remanded on a bail bond of twenty thousand dollars, the money having been posted by one J. Langdon.
Jamie. Standing by her man.
The next day, Liz had gone down to the precinct building to review her statement with a lawyer named Jeremy Naylor, who worked in the county attorney’s office. She was amazed at how young Naylor looked: he had peach fuzz hair and the baby face of an innocent untouched by the world. But his questions showed a keen mind applying itself with complete concentration to a congenial task. When they were done, he said he would have a court date arranged by the end of the week.
That was the good news. He proceeded to give her the bad. “There’s no way we’ll be on the docket before October, Ms. Kendall, and that’s optimistic. I don’t like the thought of your ex-husband having ready access to you all that time. I think we should apply for a TRO—that’s kind of an interim restraint order, issued on the basis of perceived risk. It’s a long shot. The defense will argue that it’s prejudicial, which, you know, they will have a valid point. But I’d like to give it a try all the same. For the sake of your peace of mind, and mine. Can you be free at short notice this week or next week? This will be a motion in judge’s chambers, and it will mostly be based on the police paperwork, but you might still have to go in and talk about your past history with Marc if the judge asks for specifics.”
Liz said yes, she could get the time off work. She would take it unpaid if she had to.
She went home feeling like her life was getting back on the rails. The doctor at West Penn had been right after all: everything that had happened had been a side effect of the assault she had suffered. A trauma artifact, as he put it. So long as she avoided being throttled and slammed into tiled floors, there was no reason it should ever happen to her again.
Everything was looking up. The weather had stayed fine. Molly had gone four whole weeks without an asthma attack. All three of them had watched The Wizard of Oz and the kids had been enthralled. True, Liz had had to work fourteen hours’ worth of overtime to pay what she owed for her medical bills, but in her upbeat mood that had mostly been enjo
yable. “I don’t understand how you can smile like that when you’re working the concessions stand,” her colleague Bella had marveled. “You know you’re gonna smell like burgers and fries all day, right?”
“Absolutely,” Liz shot back. “And guys go crazy for that smell. I’ll be getting more action than I can handle.” She picked up a lettuce leaf from the fixings tray and rubbed it behind her ears. “There. That should bring the vegetarians to the yard too.”
Bella guffawed and lowered the bar still further with a joke about why vegans give the best head. When Nora DoSanto, their supervisor, came by a few minutes later, she had to tell them to dial down the smut out of respect for the Pixar movie that was showing in screen three.
“Sorry, Nora,” Liz said, still giggling.
“Sorry, boss,” Bella echoed.
Liz felt like she was waking up after a long, troubled sleep. She even went back to doing the occasional volunteer shift at Serve the Homeless, which she’d stopped the previous spring when money and time were too tight and somehow never started again. She was back in the world, and the world made sense.
Then, like lightning out of a clear sky, she had another attack—and it was worse than the first.
It was a weekday morning, so Liz was dropping Zac and Molly off at school. Zac hit the ground running, taking off with a hurried “Bye, Mom!” as soon as she pulled up outside Julian C. Barry. No hugs or kisses. Public displays of affection with parents were kryptonite for teens, as Liz well knew.
At Worth Harbor, though, she took her time like always. She got to use one of the two disabled spaces right next to the front gate on account of Molly’s chest. The alternative was to park round the back of the school, which was a long trek for Moll at the start of the day.
She walked Molly to the steps and knelt to give her a hug which was enthusiastically returned.
“You be good,” she told Molly.
“I’ll be very good,” Molly said with her usual banner headline emphasis, “and get a star.”
“Well, that would be great,” Liz said. “But regular good is also fine. Nobody gets a star every day, kiddo.”
“Bye, Mommy.”
“Bye, baby.”
Molly jog-trotted into the school. In spite of her condition, she never seemed to be content with just walking. Wherever she was going, she made sure she got there fast.
When Liz got back to her car, she found herself boxed in. Someone had parked a big black SUV side-on in front of both disabled spots. Liz waited a while, then finally went off in search of the driver, trying to repress a feeling of exasperation. Her shift at the cinema didn’t start for another three hours, but she had a ton of stuff to do before then, including the week’s grocery shopping.
Mrs. Hannah at reception did everything she could, which was basically to give a shout-out over the PA system to the car’s owner, asking for them to come back and move it. Liz thanked her and went back outside.
The car was still there. Two women were standing next to it, talking in a very relaxed way as though they were there for the long haul. Liz walked up to them.
“Hi,” she said. “Is this your car?”
The nearer of the two women turned and looked her over. Liz felt a little bit intimidated by that cool glance. The woman was a head taller than her, broad-built and statuesque. Her blonde hair had a sheen to it, as did the blue satin jumpsuit she was wearing. In fact, she was all-over glossy, as was her car.
“Yeah,” she said. “What of it?”
“You’ve kind of blocked me in. Could you please roll forward a few feet so I can get my car out?”
The woman looked from Liz to Liz’s very unglossy Kia Rio, and then back to Liz. “What,” she said, “so I’m meant to believe you’re disabled?”
Liz kept her tone neutral, suppressing her irritation. “My daughter is disabled. She’s got a respiratory condition.”
Jumpsuit lady looked at her friend, who fanned herself theatrically as though this was dramatic, late-breaking news. She was blonde too, but less emphatically so. There was a pecking order, clearly. “Okay,” she said. “But it’s not on your license plate, is it? So I guess you’ve got one of those placard things from the DMV. Show me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said show me. Show me you’ve got the right to use that space.”
Liz felt herself blush furiously, not with embarrassment but with anger. She didn’t have time for this. But a shouting match would only waste more time, even if she had the stomach for it. Better to be the grown-up and let it pass.
At the same time, she didn’t want to condone such shitty behavior or make it seem like she accepted it. As she took out her keys, she said, “I’m going to make a note of your registration and report this to the school. Just so you know.”
The two women exchanged another glance, clearly not thrilled with this pronouncement. “So now you’re threatening us,” the jumpsuit lady said flatly.
“I’m not threatening you. I’m just saying. There are rules here.”
“Sounds like a threat to me,” not-so-blonde said. “This is a free country, you know.”
“Yeah,” jumpsuit lady agreed. “I’m within my rights to park here unless you got a placard. Which you didn’t prove it, so here I stay until you do.”
“You can’t intimidate us,” added not-so-blonde. “Anyone gets reported, sweetheart, it’s gonna be you.”
Liz turned and walked toward her car.
“Yeah,” jumpsuit lady said. “That’s right, bitch. Put up or shut up.”
Liz’s hand was raised to click the key and open the door. The blue DMV placard, stamped and up to date, was sitting right there on the dash.
But the thing inside her was quicker. It broke over her all at once, ice-cold, freezing her volition, taking her limbs away from her like a pickpocket.
Taking control.
Wait, Liz protested. No.
Her lips didn’t move. Her breath didn’t stir.
She turned around slowly to face the two women.
“Would you mind running that by me again?” she said with brittle courtesy. Only it wasn’t her saying it. She just felt her lips move, heard the words coming out of her mouth.
“What, are you deaf?” jumpsuit lady demanded.
Her friend shook her head in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger kind of way.
“No placard, no can do,” jumpsuit lady said. “Just the way it is. If you’re kosher, it’s all good. But if you’re abusing the system, then you’re gonna find out you picked the wrong—”
Liz was up in her face before she finished the sentence. “You know,” she said, “I’m finding a little of you goes a really long way. So here’s a thought. How about you shut the hell up right now before I shove my hand down your throat, drag out that little dangly thing at the back, the uvula or whatever it’s called, and tie it round your neck tight enough to tourniquet the sucking wound you call a mouth?”
Jumpsuit lady’s eyes went wide. “Hey!” she said, “you are way out of line. You can’t talk to me like that. That’s a threat. You threatened me!”
She tried to push Liz away, two-handed, but Liz leaned hard into the push and didn’t budge. As before, she was watching all this happen, feeling it happen, but someone else was running the show and making all the decisions. Either that or her body was acting by itself.
Her hand came up as fast as a whip, pressing her car keys against the blonde woman’s cheek just underneath her eye.
“Monocular vision is okay for most things,” Liz said, “but it’s for shit when it comes to depth perception. If I poke your eye out right now, the fist fight is going to be hilarious.”
Jumpsuit lady gasped. Her friend reached out to grab the keys. Liz intercepted her without even looking. She took hold of the woman’s thumb, left-handed, and bent it back. A surprisingly little pressure made the woman shriek with pain and drop to her knees. Liz’s right hand, holding the keys, didn’t waver by so much as a millimeter.
&nbs
p; “Really?” she said. “You want to do this? I mean, look at little me and look at the two of you. I could scar you both for life and call it self-defense.” Liz felt her lips curve into a grin, and she felt the intent behind it as a prickling rush across her own nerve endings. The thing that was moving her meant the grin as intimidation, but at the same time just … meant it. It was genuinely happy, genuinely enjoying this. Being in the driver’s seat, making the decisions, was pleasurable. And the confrontation was pleasurable, for its own sweet sake. Laying down the law to these two sizeable adversaries. Being better than them, and knowing it, and proving it.
The woman whose thumb Liz was twisting whimpered, bowed down almost all the way to the ground.
“Oh, now that’s a sweet sound,” Liz said. “I want some more of that.” Her wrist flexed. The woman on the ground gave a short, bleating squeal.
The thing inside Liz stared the jumpsuit lady down with cold joy. Liz wanted to take her own gaze out of that equation but she couldn’t. Her eyes weren’t her own.
“You’re crazy!” jumpsuit lady protested.
“Not impossible,” Liz said. “That’s probably what I’ll go with, anyway. I mean, if you decide to hide your ass behind a lawsuit, because that’s the kind of pussy move a pussy bitch like you falls back on when she can’t loudmouth her way out of trouble.”
The blonde woman backed away. The key had left a bright red mark on her cheek. She got the door of her car open and scrambled inside. “Let Eileen go,” she said. “We’ll leave. We don’t want to fight with you!”
“Then go ahead and roll your cunt-mobile the hell out of my way,” Liz countered. “Eileen and me, we’re bonding over an intense experience. She’ll join you when we’re done.”
Jumpsuit lady started the SUV and moved forward about twelve feet in a series of bunny hops, too scared to keep her foot straight on the pedal.
“Eileen what?” Liz said in a mild, almost gentle tone.
“Garaldi,” the kneeling woman gasped. “Oh God! Eileen Garaldi.”
Liz cupped both of her hands around Eileen’s one hand—a gesture that in other circumstances might have been a benediction. “Well, it’s really nice to meet you, Eileen Garaldi. But just this once. If I ever see you again, my boot is going straight up your ass, okay?”
