The Super Ladies
Page 5
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Later that night, after she was finally home and in bed with Clinton P. the Cartoon Cat resting on her ankle, Abra replayed the events of the evening over and over in her head. How in the world did the guy not see her coming at him? And how was it that Katherine wasn’t hurt? She had been right there, just a few feet away from Katherine. She saw the knife before Katherine did, saw it cut into her friend’s arm. Nothing else could have compelled her to take a flying leap at a knife-wielding stranger. And yet it was as though the guy hadn’t even seen her. Aside from a small red line on her arm, Katherine hadn’t been harmed.
Abra didn’t weigh that much—one hundred and fifteen pounds on a fat day. She liked to say it was all muscle, honed by years of running and yoga. Even so, a hundred and fifteen pounds of anything shouldn’t have been enough to knock down a six-foot-tall grown man. Unless he didn’t expect it, unless he didn’t even see her coming. At all.
Her phone beeped. She picked it up off the nightstand and saw a text message from Katherine that read: “I feel funky. Can we bag the a.m. run tomorrow?” She quickly wrote back: “I feel the same. Sat. a.m.?”
She held up her other hand and looked at it in the dim light of her phone. Her hand was there all right. Clint obviously saw it, as he took her outstretched hand as an invitation to be petted. Abra obliged, letting his rhythmic purr finally lull her to sleep.
Chapter Five
When Margie walked into her dark, silent house, it was the first time she had felt safe and calm since they left the restaurant. Juno greeted her, tail flapping like a pom-pom. A border collie is a good thing to have if you don’t want to be the most neurotic being in the house.
Juno was definitely Mommy’s Dog. Somehow they understood each other on the deepest of levels, as though Juno wanted to help shoulder the task of caring for everyone else. Margie sat on the stairs off the living room, just getting lost in Juno’s long brown-and-white fur. Hugging the dog was cheaper and quicker than therapy. “I’m glad you’re here, baby,” she whispered. Juno licked her hand in reply. So what if the dog was really only searching for some stray taste of the last thing Margie had eaten? It made her feel better, as though she belonged to a loving pack.
It never bothered her that Katherine and Abra ran together just about every morning, that they held running in common, apart from her. They weren’t in middle school—you didn’t have to do everything together to call yourselves best friends. The three of them had saved Janelle. She could accept that she had played an active role in helping even if she hadn’t gotten out of the van.
But Katherine and Abra had done things tonight that she hadn’t. Things none of them had even tried to explain. Margie considered the facts as she stroked Juno’s silky ears. That guy Sean was strong, of that there was no doubt. She saw Janelle’s bruises, and the police had taken her to the emergency room. The swipe at Katherine’s arm should have hurt her, yet Katherine hadn’t bled a drop. She was fine save for a mark that looked like a scar from a long-ago injury.
Margie was almost willing to accept that perhaps Sean’s knife had only grazed Katherine, that maybe they all just thought he had cut her. But what to make of Abra? Margie had watched her friends the entire time she’d been in the van calling 911. The passenger door and the side sliding door were open, giving her a clear view of everything happening on the sidewalk. She had been able to see all four people, except for the few seconds when she only saw three. It was dark out, granted, but not so dark that she would be able to see someone one second and unable to see her the next. There was a moment when Margie would swear on the heads of her children that Abra had disappeared. It was right before Sean fell over. Or was knocked down. Margie saw it happen. No young man just falls over like that. It was clear by how he fell that he had been pushed. The problem was, she hadn’t seen anyone push him.
It was too weird to think about when all she really wanted to do was check on her kids and go to sleep. Margie stood up, said, “Come on,” to Juno, and went upstairs. Together, she and the dog peeked into each bedroom.
At nearly eighteen, Eli was really too old to be called a “kid,” but as she often said to him, “You’ll always be my first baby. Deal with it.” He was stretched out spread-eagle on his bed, arms and legs everywhere. The past four years had been so difficult for him, but now he seemed comfortable and even content in his ever-growing skin. At six foot one, he already towered over Karl (which wasn’t difficult). Being on the tall side seemed to give Eli more confidence. He was pursuing his love of drawing and last year had discovered distance running, both of which seemed to be able to lift him out of the dark places where formerly he tried hurting himself. It was a little overwhelming to think that he’d be starting college in three months.
A little farther down the hall was Joan’s room. The only girl and the toughest one in the bunch was how Karl always described her. Joan was still angry with herself about the explosion, not because they could have been injured or because Brush High School’s chemistry lab was now covered in phytoestrogen-infused slime, but because it wasn’t clear if she’d get another chance to show her experiment or not. The idea of waiting until next year to compete at the state science fair was about as palatable as Margie’s suggestion that she use dry ice instead of the CO2 pump the next time she ran the extraction. Despite her ever-changing teenage moods, Joan was a great kid. Margie hoped she’d continue swimming and playing soccer. Sports and academics seemed to insulate her a bit from the slings and arrows of the Eileen O’Briens of the world.
Last was Grant, who slept in a room that was technically a utility closet but that he insisted on claiming as his own at age seven because he refused to share a bedroom with a teenager. After six months, when they realized Grant would not be moved, they built a loft bed in there to give him a bit more useable space. Now, as an eleven-year-old, Grant had the coolest room in the house. Juno didn’t like it because she couldn’t climb up the ladder to sleep on his bed. Grant must have smelled okay from a distance, however, because the dog seemed to think her job was done and plopped down on the dirty jeans and T-shirt Grant had left on his floor. Margie was too tired to bother picking them up right now.
Satisfied that all of her children were still breathing, she quickly got ready for bed. Karl was already conked out, sleeping on his back again but, thankfully, not snoring. Once she was in bed, Margie cuddled up next to him. Even asleep, Karl responded, rolling onto his side and spooning with her. In the morning, she’d wake him with a kiss and the start of a hand job, but for now it was enough to feel the security of his body next to hers.
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In a family of early risers, Katherine was typically the first one awake. Staying up late and getting up early had always held a certain allure, as though proof her body didn’t need the rest or sleep other bodies did, as though her body was special. She awoke at five twenty as she did almost every day—no alarm necessary—and stretched, sorry she’d canceled the morning run with Abra. If you run consistently, run all your life, you will live through weeks and weeks of biding your time while the latest pulled muscle or tendon heals. But if you run consistently, run all your life, you will also live through rarified periods when absolutely nothing hurts. The morning after the incident on the sidewalk was one of the latter; it seemed a shame to waste it.
Next to her, Hal stirred slightly. He was usually awake around six or six thirty, followed shortly by Anna, who greeted each new day with the gusto and enthusiasm only a nine-year-old can muster. Hal liked to get into work early. Manderville Chemical was a great job, especially after the uneasy eighteen months they went through when he was denied tenure at the university. His new job had actually given Katherine leeway to move from teaching middle school science in a public school to teaching biology at Beaumont, an all-girls Catholic high school a few miles away.
She’d had some doubts about taking the job. To begin with, Katherine wasn’t sure
if she was still Catholic anymore. Maybe culturally Catholic, but she wasn’t sure she still believed. Not in the fervent way she remembered the old ladies of her childhood who seemed to be perpetually bowed in prayer must have believed. Not even in the more pragmatic way her mother had believed, where faith was like a Swiss Army knife you kept in your back pocket for emergencies. But here she was, teaching in a Catholic school and loving it. The all-girl environment turned out to be less touchy-feely and more invigorating than she expected. The girls seemed free, unencumbered. Plus, it was close to home, and Anna could even go there tuition-free if she wanted. Despite the pay cut, she had to admit it was a better life all around.
Carefully, so she wouldn’t wake Hal, she got out of bed and crept into the small bathroom off their bedroom. Once the door was closed and the light on, she took a good look at her left arm. There was a fine pink line slicing straight down the middle of her forearm that hadn’t been there before last night. The knife had most certainly touched her. Not only had she felt it—here was physical proof.
There was a time, early in their relationship, when she and Hal were driving home from a long weekend of winter hiking. On a back road, shortly after they’d left their rented cabin, a car traveling in the opposite direction spun on a patch of ice and hit them. It was the first time Katherine had ever been in an accident. She’d always heard people talk about time slowing during a crisis, how people could remember every second, every heartbeat of an accident. She’d been amazed to discover it was true, been surprised to realize that she could be surprised by the glacial passage of time and simultaneously acutely conscious of the car spinning toward them, of Hal trying to turn off the road to get out of the way, of the impact as the two cars hit, of snowy woods and sky and road swirling in her vision as their car spun in two complete circles, of the breath she took when both cars had stopped moving, of the silence when she and Hal looked at each other and realized they were both unharmed.
Her mind went back to the confrontation on the sidewalk. She’d felt that same clarity, that same mindfulness when she stepped out of the car. Sean with the knife had cut her. She could remember the moment the blade touched her arm, could remember the feeling of the metal against her skin and the momentary prick of pain as it sliced her flesh. How could she remember the whole thing in such detail if she hadn’t actually been cut?
It was too early to text Abra and say she’d changed her mind. Abra was probably sleeping in anyway. And today she wanted to be by herself. Katherine ran her and Abra’s regular route, starting off at a fast clip and not letting up, not feeling the need to let up. With the exception of two other runners and a few people walking dogs, the park and the trail were quiet.
The “Why?” of it all knocked around her brain for the entire run. She mentally took a step back and tried to look at the question objectively. An arm—not necessarily her arm, just a standard human arm—is sliced by someone who intends to do harm. There is no harm done. Empirical evidence would suggest that something unusual is going on with the arm in question. She needed more data. She didn’t have a knife handy, but she could still do some experimentation. If the arm in question could withstand a knife, what else could it and the body to which it was attached withstand?
The far end of the park ended in a parking lot with a picnic pavilion, basketball courts, and a small playground. The playground had a number of ramps and different levels, including two slides of varying heights. Maybe, she thought and sprinted to the taller slide. She didn’t bother with the ladder but ran right up the sliding board. The platform at the top was about ten or eleven feet off the ground. Not high enough to kill you but enough to hurt if you weren’t careful.
Katherine swung a leg over the railing at the top of the slide platform and managed to squeeze herself through the open space between the railing and the low, pointed roof that made the platform look like the turret on a castle. Holding onto the railing, she faced outward and wedged her heels into the tiny space between the railing and the bottom of the platform. She looked down at the wood chips that were supposed to soften the fall when children fell. It was an improvement from the hard-packed dirt at the playground where she grew up, but she was still ten feet up. A wave of vertigo swept over her, a wave that warned: “This is too high to jump.” Was the fear instinctual, a holdover of forty-seven years of being told human bodies shouldn’t fall off high places? She patted the back pocket of her running shorts and felt her phone. If she injured herself, fine, she’d know everything she’d been thinking about was a load of crap. If she couldn’t limp home, she’d swallow her pride, call Hal, and make up an injury story.
But what if the fear wasn’t necessary? “It won’t hurt,” she said aloud and jumped.
You’re supposed to roll when you jump from a high surface, but at the last second, she decided not to. Rather, she realized she didn’t need to. The instant her running shoes hit the ground, the fear she’d felt at the top of the platform slipped away. It felt as easy as jumping off the bottom step. Nothing hurt. Just for kicks, she ran up the slide again. This time, instead of climbing to the outside of the platform, she decided to go higher. The little pointed roof on top of the slide wasn’t so little or so pointed that an enterprising adult couldn’t squat on it. She felt like a very small King Kong. She was also considerably higher than she had been before. Looking down, the ground seemed awfully far away. She jumped and hit the ground running. For a moment, she let the “Why?” and “How?” of it all slip away and simply enjoyed the sensation of running fast, of moving like a machine, untiring, indestructible.
Even though she ran full bore all the way, her experimenting made her late getting home. Hal never left for work until Katherine was back from her run because Anna didn’t yet feel comfortable being home alone. He was standing in the garage by his car when she reached their driveway.
“Hi,” she said, the word coming out like a gasp, not because she was out of breath but because she was exhilarated not to be out of breath. Then the “Why?” came rushing back. She wanted to tell Hal…something. What, she wasn’t sure. “I had a really great run and lost track of time. Sorry.”
“Thanks for hurrying,” Hal said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek and getting in his car. It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
Chapter Six
The morning after the fight or the incident or whatever she was supposed to call it, Abra spent a good seventy-five minutes on the yoga mat holding, inverting, hollow-backing, breathing, and trying to work through what the hell had happened the night before.
She could remember very clearly the drive from the Metropolitan and getting out of the van. She could remember the terrified look on Janelle’s face and the little trickle of blood on the side of her forehead that reflected in the streetlight. Then there was the knife; the sight of it against Katherine’s arm was burned into her memory. She’d felt a wave of sickening anger, or maybe it was fear, when she saw Katherine get cut. It wasn’t an emotion she’d ever felt before—a wave of gut-wrenching cramps fueled by blind rage. As she took her flying leap at Sean, the gaping sensation in the pit of her stomach, the cramp, the pain, all of it disappeared in a blink.
That’s where her memory got foggy.
One night when she was about ten, Abra had gotten out of bed and walked downstairs to where her father was watching The Tonight Show in the living room. Jack Hanna, the famous zookeeper, was on the show with a tiny monkey. Abra’s father let her watch the monkey pee on Johnny Carson’s desk then told her it was late and to go back to bed. The next morning she remembered the whole thing as a dream, but her father confirmed it had actually happened. There was the same hint of not quite wakefulness, of consciousness in another realm in the few seconds where she had knocked Sean down then scrambled back into the van. Someone had been yelling, “Go! Go!” to Margie. Maybe it was her. The memory of hearing “Go! Go!” existed; the memory of saying it herself did not.
By the time they reached the cave-like central transit hub underneath the Terminal Tower in the center of downtown, the train cars would be standing room only. Friends in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles would joke that Cleveland didn’t have a rush hour. Abra always countered that it did, but it only lasted fifty minutes. By the time the train arrived downtown, she would typically have given her seat to one of the elderly women who always seemed to be riding the train without a set destination.
She had been the marketing director at Hoffmann Software Solutions for nine years. In that time, the company had nearly doubled in size. Sandy in Human Resources was making a big deal about hiring their fiftieth employee. Hoffmann designed and sold inventory management systems for retail and manufacturing clients. When she’d taken the job at age thirty-eight, a director position seemed like an accomplishment. Nine years later, some of the shine of the title had worn off. She was still a one-person department. Being a director just meant she had to go to more meetings and was too tired in the evenings to do much of her own writing.