by E. R. Fallon
“I take it you declined. Why?”
“I did. I don’t like him seeing you throw up.”
“I don’t throw up.”
Violet looked at her mother. “You’ve done it plenty of times. Most of the time you’re just not conscious enough to remember.”
Catherine’s face reddened in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know I’ve tried programs to help me get sober, but they never work.”
“That’s because you never stay at them long enough to work.”
“They’re expensive,” her mother insisted.
“Grandpa left you some money when he died.”
“I don’t want to spend it. That money is supposed to be for you and Tommy.”
Tommy was her twelve-year-old son, who she had with a guy in the Italian mob named Kevin Carmine but who she’d never married.
“Yeah, but you’re always saying how soon we’ll be making enough to retire comfortably. I think you just don’t want to stay sober.”
“It’s my business,” her mother snapped.
“What you do affects me also. What about going to a support group?”
“You know how I don’t like those. Let’s just drop this. Okay?”
Violet reluctantly agreed as she often did when the topic came up.
Violet escorted her mother out of the pub, and with Catherine leaning against her and swaying with drunkenness, she locked up the pub and then walked her mother up the side stairwell outside the building and up to the apartment her mother had lived in ever since Violet’s grandfather’s death. Violet herself lived nearby.
Outside the apartment door, Catherine handed her the key and Violet opened the door. She felt for the light switch and brought her mother inside the apartment. The couch was close to the door and Violet set her mother down there.
When Violet first started bringing her drunk mother upstairs to bed, when Violet was in her teens, her mother had thanked her for the help. But as the years went by it became a sort of routine and the ‘thank yous’ had stopped.
After Violet had locked and bolted the front door—it was New York and the neighborhood wasn’t exactly safe—she got her mother up from the couch and led her into the bedroom and turned on the lamp.
Violet and her mother owned all the apartments above the pub and, since they were fair landlords, many of their tenants had rented from them for years. Most of the other landlords in the neighborhood had kicked out their years-long tenants in favor of the new professionals who had moved into the neighborhood in the last few years and who could pay more rent, but Violet and her mother had remained loyal to their own kind.
Violet helped her mother into bed and undressed her. She got her nightgown out of the drawer.
“Raise your hands up,” she told her mother, and when she did Violet slipped the gown over her mother’s head.
Her mother looked up at her with tears in her eyes; she often become emotional when drunk. “Thank you,” she said to Violet.
“You’re welcome,” Violet said. “Why are you sad?”
“I have my reasons,” Catherine said faintly.
“Do you want to tell me them?” Violet asked gently.
“Not tonight. Maybe someday I will.”
Violet nodded. “All right.” She went into the bathroom to get her mother a glass of water and handed it to her. She set down a bottle of headache relief medicine on her mother’s nightstand.
“I figured you could use that later.” She indicated to the bottle.
“Smart girl,” her mother said. “Thanks for looking out for me.”
Violet handed the water glass to Catherine and she got under the covers and Violet turned off the lamp.
“Don’t forget to take a pill when you wake up,” she told her mother as she left the room.
“I won’t.”
Violet left her mother’s apartment building and walked to her own apartment. She and her mother both owned unregistered guns and Violet carried hers, a small piece, in her purse for when she walked home alone at night in the dangerous city, which was often. She had frightened away a knife-carrying, would-be robber more than once. And if they’d had a gun themselves, what would she have done? She’d learned long ago that most didn’t have enough strength to pull that trigger, but that she did.
A homeless woman asked her for money, and she gave her a few dollars. The woman grinned from ear to ear. She enjoyed doing random kind things like that sometimes, because she figured that in the eyes of God, it might make up for all the bad things she’d done and would do.
She made it home safely that night and entered her apartment building, smiling to herself when she thought of how immaculate her building looked compared to Camille O’Brien’s place. Her mother might have had a soft spot for Camille but at least Violet lived in a better building. If things kept going the way they were, she would have enough money to move to the suburbs. She wanted Tommy to finish growing up with fresh air and green grass, under clear, blue skies.
Her live-in boyfriend Anton was home with Tommy, but both would be asleep at that hour. Anton, American born and half Irish and half Russian, used to work for a rival Russian gang, but after meeting Violet, he now worked for her and her mother.
The apartment building was quiet, as it often was during the late nights she returned home. On her floor she got her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. The light inside was on, but at first it looked like the living room was empty and she figured that Anton and Tommy were probably asleep. Well, Tommy better be. She set her keys on the table by the front door and shut and locked the door. Then she entered the living room and saw a shirtless Anton seated on the couch in front of the low coffee table, injecting what looked like heroin into his rubber-banded arm. He was using again, when he’d promised her over the last few months that he was clean. She should have known better than to trust him.
“V,” he said quietly. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Like hell it isn’t,” Violet exclaimed. “You’re using again.”
4
Anton set the needle down on the table and sat back into the couch. “I really tried not to, but I couldn’t stop.”
Violet shook her head in anger.
Her first concern was Tommy—had he seen Anton shooting up? She went to check on him and breathed out in relief when she found him asleep in his bedroom. She didn’t want him seeing things like that; she didn’t want to ruin his innocence too soon, like her own had been. She made it a point to keep him away from the darker aspects of her life and her business, and Anton had brought that reality straight into her home, where Tommy could have seen.
Violet shut the door to keep Anton out and knelt on the floor of Tommy’s room. She stroked his hair and watched him sleeping peacefully.
Tommy heard her in his room and stirred. “Mom?” he asked sleepily. “What’s going on?”
“It’s all right, sweetheart, go back to sleep.” She kissed his forehead.
She would have to deal with Anton. Violet rose. She’d taken her purse with her into Tommy’s bedroom and she removed her silver gun. Anton had a gun himself, and it wouldn’t be easy to get him to leave, but she would make him. She left Tommy’s room and closed the door behind her. Violet marched into the living room and pointed the gun at Anton, who had fallen asleep in a drug-induced stupor on the couch.
“Get out of my apartment,” she ordered. “This is the last time you’ll expose my child to this. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
But Anton hadn’t been sleeping like she’d thought; he was awake with his eyes shut. He chuckled and opened his eyes.
“That’s pretty ironic coming from you, who used to be a junkie yourself,” he said smugly.
Violet shook with rage and wanted to pull the trigger. Anton often brought up her own past during their arguments about his using drugs because he knew it bothered her.
“I won’t let you expose Tommy to this,” she said calmly. “Leave now.”
&nbs
p; “They took Tommy away from you,” he replied. “Because you were such a big junkie.”
“That was years ago,” Violet said, trying not to let her voice crack. “I was just a kid.”
A social worker had temporarily removed Tommy from her care a year after his birth because she had been arrested for heroin possession. The charges were later downgraded to a misdemeanor and she’d been granted probation instead of jail time. Anton knew how to get her where it hurt the most, through Tommy.
“Once a junkie, always a junkie. You’re a junkie, too, V, and don’t you forget it.”
Violet wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but she had Tommy to think about in the other room. She didn’t want to wake him, and she didn’t want him to see her pointing a gun at someone.
“Anton, I’m warning you, I won’t hesitate to use this on you,” she said.
“Yeah, and then you and your mother will have some of the guys dispose of my body. I got people, family, who’ll miss me, so you might want to think twice about that.”
But Violet knew that in this neighborhood when it came to the matters of her and her mother, people didn’t dare ring the police. Still, Tommy would hear if she shot him and he’d come out to look and see everything, and she didn’t want him to have such an unpleasant memory.
“Get up and go,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
Anton looked at her and seemed to be deciding what to do then he started to rise, unsteadily.
“I guess this means I’m no longer working for you and your mother,” he mumbled.
“You’ve guessed right,” she replied, figuring the Russians would just cajole him back into joining them. Anton was the kind of guy that was useful for a gang to have around because he would do almost any task asked of him, no matter how gruesome.
“Good,” Anton said tersely. “I don’t like taking orders from my woman anyway.”
“I never was your ‘woman’,” Violet snapped.
Anton looked at her and smirked. “On most nights you were. I didn’t hear you complaining then.”
Violet cringed at the innuendo. “Get out, and I never want to see you again.”
“I’m sure you will. You’ll come crawling back because you miss me so much.” He blew her a kiss.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Violet still had the gun pointed at him just in case he tried something, and she kept her eyes on his hands instead of his face.
Anton put on his shirt and seemed to be taking forever and she wanted to yell at him to hurry up, but she didn’t want Tommy coming out of his room. Tommy had never seen her gun or her mother’s, or Anton’s. He didn’t know about the violence in their lives. The irony was that Anton had always treated Tommy well. That was a big rule she’d had over the years of dating: the guys had to like her son.
“Can I get my things?” Anton asked.
“I’ll come with you,” Violet said and trailed him into their bedroom.
Anton had moved in recently, after convincing her of his sobriety, so he didn’t have much to pack. He got his clothes out of the drawers and tossed his gun on top then he zippered the bag and grabbed it from the bed.
“Go,” Violet gave a quiet order; Tommy’s bedroom was adjacent to theirs.
Pointing the gun at his back, Violet followed Anton into the living room. She gestured at the implements on the coffee table.
“Take those with you,” she said. “I don’t want them in my home.”
“Why, afraid you’ll be tempted to use it?” Anton remarked with a cruel smile.
Violet didn’t answer him. Anton grabbed the materials, opened his bag and shoved them inside under her watch. She followed him to the front door.
“One more thing,” she said. “I need the key I gave you.” With her free hand, she opened her palm in front of him.
Anton grunted. “You’re really serious about me not coming back, aren’t you? I thought you’d cool off after a couple of days.”
“I want you gone for good,” Violet replied. “And you no longer work for me and my mother. You know we don’t tolerate junkies. We already gave you a second chance because Tommy likes you.”
Anton took the spare apartment key out of his pocket and gave it to her with a sigh. “You know, it’s too bad we had to end it like this, with you pointing a fucking gun at me, when the beginning was so nice.”
Violet shrugged, although she knew Tommy would be disappointed to see him go. Anton left and Violet shut and bolted the door behind him. As she started to go check on Tommy, the phone rang in the kitchen.
Violet ran in and answered.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” her mother said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she said. “I went and got some fresh air when I woke up.”
“You didn’t sleep for very long,” Violet said.
“You know me, I don’t need much sleep.”
“Why are you calling at this hour? You wanted to talk? I threw Anton out.”
“What happened?”
“He’s using again.”
“That’s too bad. I liked Anton.”
“He’s gone, this time for good. I can’t have that in the house with Tommy.”
“I know. I’m sure you did the right thing. How’s Tommy going to take it? I know he liked Anton.”
“I’ll worry about that when he gets up,” Violet replied.
“About why I’m calling,” Catherine said, “you know the guy who’s been giving Max the runaround?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I’ve been thinking about it—that’s what I’ve been doing since getting some fresh air—and I think it’s time to say goodbye.”
Violet knew her mother meant the man who owed them thousands through Max and wasn’t paying up. Her mother wanted him whacked. They would discuss those matters in a roundabout way just in case they were being wiretapped.
“Should I meet you at the pub?” Violet asked her mother.
“Yeah, in a half hour. I’ll call the guys and tell them to meet us there.”
A middle of the night or very early morning in person ‘meeting’ at the pub to discuss a problem wasn’t uncommon in their business, and often occurred when they needed to deal with something and her mother didn’t want to discuss it on the phone.
Violet didn’t like leaving Tommy alone when he was sleeping, especially at that odd hour, but with Anton gone, it wasn’t like she’d be able to easily find a babysitter in the middle of the night.
She went into the bathroom and saw she didn’t look well so she washed her face and put on some fresh makeup. She fixed her hair and then went to check on Tommy in his room. She saw him breathing softly under the covers and smiled to herself. If the rest of her life was a mess, Tommy was the one thing she had gotten right.
“I’ll be back in a while to walk you to school,” she whispered to Tommy, but he couldn’t hear her.
She closed the door to Tommy’s bedroom and put her gun in her purse and walked out the door, locking it behind her.
Out on the dark street, the hot city air dampened her bare arms. She passed by a group of prostitutes who were on the lookout for clients.
“Hello, ladies,” she said, because she knew them from the neighborhood, and knew they wouldn’t ask her questions about where she was headed at that late hour. They knew she owned the pub down the street and that sometimes she gave them a hot meal when they were in need, but that was all.
“Hi, sugar,” one of them replied.
Violet continued walking to the pub, keeping her purse with her gun inside tucked under her arm just in case she needed it. Sometimes, she carried her gun in her waistband, but it was more noticeable when she did so, and she had to be careful. She made it to the pub even before her mother who lived upstairs, so she unlocked the door but kept the lights off so they wouldn’t draw suspicion given the hour and couldn’t as easily be photographed inside. The meeting would take place in the locked
backroom behind the kitchen, which everyone thought was an unused supply closet, and was a place only Violet, her mother, and Max and their men knew the truth about. Not even Camille had been allowed inside it.
With her purse on the bar, Violet sat and waited for her mother and their men to arrive. Max wouldn’t be coming because they mostly respected his wish to not be bothered in the wee hours at his age but would be kept informed of what unfolded. She could make out the clock in the dark room, and seeing that her mother and men would be late, she reached over the bar and helped herself to the bottle of fine whiskey she kept there. Like heroin had once been, drinking was another one of Violet’s weaknesses, and so it was something she didn’t indulge in often. But after throwing out Anton, she figured she deserved a drink.
“Just one,” she whispered to herself. “Just one.”
Not bothering to use a glass, she opened the bottle and put it to her lips. It had been a while since she last drank, and she enjoyed the strong, refined taste in her mouth. She set down the bottle on the bar then reached for it again, held it in her hand for a moment and considered taking another drink. It would be easy to become like her mother and drown her sorrows in the bottle. And just what was her mother so sorrowful about? Violet supposed she had her reasons, like everyone did. Then Tommy’s smiling face appeared in her mind, like a reminder not to indulge. Violet pushed the bottle off to the side of the bar.
She watched the clock. Where were they? Then something unpleasant crossed her mind. Had something happened to delay them, such as an arrest? Her mother was directly upstairs and probably just running late, but the men were out of her sight and she didn’t know what was going on with them.
There was a knock on the door, and then Derrick, Violet and her mother’s top man, besides Max, walked inside the pub.
“Derrick,” she said.
He recognized her voice in the dark. “No lights?” he remarked. “Are you all right, Violet?” he asked as though she was being unnecessarily paranoid.
“You know better than anyone that we have to be careful,” she replied.
“Yeah, but I might trip and crack my head in the dark,” he joked.
