Traps

by MacKenzie Bezos

  Lynn blinks.

  Dana doesn’t wait for an answer. She leads mother and daughter silently to the back of her armored car and pops the tailgate to show them Grace waiting: white, muzzled, tethered to the tie-down by a leather lead, lying still on the bloody mat. The cut on her neck is ragged and long, and the basket muzzle is slick with her bubbly drools.

  Dana takes the two corners of the tailgate mat beneath Grace’s head to make a stretcher of it, and Lynn and Jessica look at the corners beneath her tail. Right away it is clear to all three of them what will need to happen. Jessica reaches in with her uninjured hand to grab the back corner, and Lynn takes the other corner with hers, each woman trying as best she can to give the other space, not quite touching, not even facing each other really, trailing the dog behind them as they face forward and lumber toward the garage and pass out of the bright light and into its cool dark concrete-scented shade. It is an awkward business, but they manage to get the dog up onto the sheet, still lying on the bloody car mat but finally there at least, on a white sheet in the sun from the window. Without saying a word Lynn picks up a needle and begins, and Dana retreats to the center of the turnaround, watching their backs from the distance Jessica had requested. Lynn’s elbow rises with each long pull of the thread, and Jessica stands beside her resting her hand on the dog’s flank, and neither of their heads move with talking. They are both watching the dog, Grace scrabbling a bit with each pull and her head straining toward the wall and her black lips curled inside the cage of the muzzle at the pain of mending.

  When Lynn ties the knot and snips it, she steps to the sink to wash her hands. Her stitching is tight and even, the flesh mounded in places and bristling with white fur. Jessica keeps a hand on Grace’s flank and watches her mother’s hands at the sink, her good hand and her bad one, soaping and rinsing more than is probably needed.

  Lynn turns to her when she’s clean, but she doesn’t say anything.

  Jessica says, “Thank you.”

  Lynn looks at her, blinking, considering the different replies she might make.

  Jessica says, “Should she rest here?”

  “We should lower her to the floor. She might try to stand when we leave, and fall.”

  They can manage just the two of them this time, each taking two corners of the big white sheet in one hand and lifting it like a hammock and lowering it gently to the floor Vivian mopped clean the day before. Grace’s eyes are closed, and her red-soaked chest rises and lowers visibly with her breaths. They stare at her as if it is needed, both of them wondering what to say.

  Finally Lynn works up her courage. “Can I fix you a cup of tea?”

  Jessica goes on looking at the dog. She stares at it so long Lynn thinks of asking it again, and then finally Jessica says, “I guess that would be all right.”

  Lynn leads the way to her kitchen, and Jessica follows. They pass in through the living room, stepping over the baby gate and crinkling past the mama dog with her puppies wrestling alongside. They pass in through the dark front hall and on into the kitchen. Lynn takes the kettle from the stove and fills it standing at the sink, the yellow-curtained windows with the mountains in the distance and the bright blue sky framing her there. Jessica lays a hand on the chair and glances at her mother’s back at the sink. A pair of baby bottles and nipples sit clean in the drying rack beside her.

  “Where are the babies?”

  “Upstairs sleeping,” her mother says without turning. “I wore them out, I guess, with my rusty handling.”

  “Whose are they?”

  Lynn puts the kettle on the stove and lights the burner with the long-handled lighter, holding the stove knob in. It clicks a few times before it catches. She says, “They belong to a girl who’s staying here and helping me out with the dogs. She needed to be gone today, and I told her I’d watch over them.” She turns and faces her daughter. Jessica is picking at the gauze on her wounded hand.

  Lynn says, “What happened there?”

  “The dog bit it.”

  “Do you know if she’s had her shots?”

  “I don’t. I got the bite checked by a doctor, though. She said it was fine and I should just keep an eye on the dog for the next ten days to make sure her behavior doesn’t seem rabid.”

  “I could do that for you.”

  “Could you?”

  “I’d like to.”

  Jessica looks down at her lap, and Lynn looks outside at her dogs still digging around the pipe. They are quiet so long the water in the kettle begins to make that hushing sound it will make before it boils.

  Finally Jessica says, “It’s Dad’s dog.”

  Lynn regards her. She has never in her life felt so careful about what she might say.

  Jessica says, “He’s in the hospital, and his neighbors were complaining about the barking so his landlady called me.”

  Lynn holds very still while Jessica says this, her eyes on Jessica’s face and her own face neutral. In the pause that follows she finally nods—an infinitesimal movement of her chin. Then she takes out two blue enamel cups and sets them softly on the table. And she takes out the paper box of teas and sets this there too. Then a squeeze bottle of honey shaped like a bear. She pours the water into each cup and puts the kettle back on the stove. She sits down in the second chair, across from her daughter. Jessica sifts through the bags and selects one—Apple Cinnamon—and after she withdraws her hand, without looking Lynn takes one herself—Lemon, it turns out to be. Lynn pinches the bag between her metal loops and tears with her fingers, and Jessica fumbles a moment in her lap under the table and then grips hers in her mouth and tears with her left hand.

  Lynn says, “Do you need anything for it? Tylenol or Advil or anything?”

  And Jessica says, “What were you calling to say all those times?”

  “What?”

  “What were you calling to say—all those times you tried calling me through the studio?”

  Lynn swallows, the dry tea bag still in her hand. She holds it there, watching her daughter busy herself, looking down, setting her tea bag in her cup and trailing the string out onto the table; pinching the white paper tab on the end of her tea bag string and folding it.

  Lynn says, “First just ‘I love you and I’m sorry.’ ”

  Jessica pleats and re-pleats the little white paper with her fingers. “Something different after that?”

  “Yes. Later it was also ‘I stopped drinking and I know how I hurt you. And if you’re willing to hear it I’d like to list all the ways so I can make amends.’ ” She is looking down now, trying to stand her dry tea bag on the wood table. “It was part of my twelve-step program.”

  “How long ago did you stop drinking?”

  “Four years and twenty-seven days.”

  Jessica’s lips tremble and her eyes well up. She picks up her cup and takes a small sip and sets it down, looking off to the side, at the sink, or the window while her mother regards her, still not brewing her own tea. Jessica swipes under her eyes and then looks down at her tea. “That’s good. That must be, I mean.”

  Lynn nods.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t let you tell me.”

  “I was a scary person—a person who loved you and also hurt you. That’s what you knew.”

  She sets her tea bag on the surface of the water in her own cup finally. They both watch it darken and sink.

  Lynn says, “I’d like to say it still, if it’s okay with you.”

  Jessica’s hands rise to the sides of her face, not quite covering her ears. She laughs nervously and crosses her arms and then uncrosses them, settling her hand and the big mitten of gauze together in her lap. “All right,” she says.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then.” Lynn stands and reaches up onto the high shelf and behind the bottle and she withdraws the piece of lined paper, folded and folded and folded again so that it can hide there, long and thin. She sits back down. She unfolds it first lengthwise and then crosswise
again and again and again. It is pleated so heavily it curls in on her hand. The tiny scrawl is water-stained and full of crosshatches and arrows and seemingly intentionally illegible besides, but she knows what it says. She looks at it and then up again at Jessica’s eyes.

  “I was your only parent, the one who tucked notes in your lunches and talked you to sleep from bad dreams, and I also hurt you. I have a list here of the ways I did it if you’ll let me read it.”

  Jessica nods.

  Lynn looks down again at her paper and reads, pausing for a long while after each one to give it its due:

  I let you clean up my vomit.

  I passed out and let you worry I would never wake up.

  I slapped your face when we argued.

  I shoved you down the stairs.

  She looks up at Jessica and sees the tears streaming down her face. “Is this all right? Should I keep going?”

  Jessica nods again, firming her lips, her chin trembling.

  Lynn looks down. The paper is quivering in her good hand, like a husk of something.

  All your life I told you your father was dead to protect

  you from what he was.

  Then, when you were sixteen, when I could see that the

  person he’d become in your mind was a better parent than

  I’d managed to be, I told you the truth and dared you to

  go see for yourself if you weren’t better off with a mother

  who broke your arm by shoving you down the stairs.

  She flips the paper over to see the last one on the other side:

  And I failed to find you when you took me up on it.

  “You were drunk, Mama.”

  “I chose to be.”

  Jessica wipes under her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Then she takes a sip of her tea.

  Lynn lays the paper on the table, curved and ribbed from years of folding and unfolding, and does the same.

  They set their cups down but hold on to them.

  The static on the baby monitor hisses.

  Jessica says, “I’m sorry I left.”

  “You needed to.”

  “I’m sorry I went to him.”

  “Are you, though?”

  “Of course.” Jessica blinks. “I could have skipped it. All the grief he’s caused me and my family.”

  Lynn shrugs. “Apparently not.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently you couldn’t just skip him. Me neither, by the way.”

  She stands and opens a drawer with a clatter. She takes out two teaspoons, and from the cupboard she gets a little saucer. She sets a spoon in front of Jessica and uses the other to pull the tea bag from her water and wrap the string around and around, squeezing it against the bowl of the spoon. Then she sets it on the little plate between them.

  Jessica lets her tea keep steeping. She says, “But just think how much better life would be for both of us if we had.”

  Lynn shakes her head. “I don’t know about that. If I’d skipped him, you wouldn’t even be here.”

  She takes a sip, and Jessica watches her.

  Lynn says, “Life is full of things that feel like traps. Our own weaknesses and mistakes. Unlucky accidents. The violence done to us by others. But they’re not always what they seem. Sometimes later we see that they led us where we needed to go.”

  Jessica straightens. She shakes her head bitterly. “No—”

  “I’m not saying they’re not awful—”

  “No way—”

  “I’m saying they can be both. I’m saying it gets used.”

  Jessica gives her head another fierce little shake and then looks up at the ceiling and bites her lip to keep the tears from spilling over.

  Lynn waits a second, watching her.

  On the ceiling where she is looking there is nothing at all to see. Just plain white plaster and a bowl of frosted glass diffusing the light from a single bulb.

  Lynn says, “That farm accident I lost this hand in? It was an accident he rigged for money, and I can’t even say for sure that wasn’t some kind of gift to me.”

  Jessica lowers her chin. An incredulous puff of air escapes her. “How do you figure that?”

  “It made it just a hair too hard to drive a car when I was drunk. It’s what forced me to ask those girls to board with me and help me out. Who knows? I might be dead if I had two hands.”

  Lynn looks at her over the top of her cup, elbows on the table, her good fingers and her bad holding her cup suspended. She shrugs. “Would anything be different for you if you’d skipped him? The kind of job you picked? The kind of husband you picked? The kind of mother you’re turning out to be?”

  She watches her daughter’s face change, thinking about that.

  Jessica presses a finger to the bowl of the spoon her mother gave her, tipping it up, and then lets it settle.

  Lynn says, “Maybe you’ve got the whole mess with him to thank for some of what you love.”

  Jessica shakes her head again, looking down, crying finally.

  Lynn says, “Maybe he’s not our devil, but our angel instead. Or mirror. Maybe it’s only ever ourselves we have to fight or forgive.”

  11

  Facts

  Vivian sits on a wooden bench in the hallway outside the courtroom. She leans forward a bit to open the purse she borrowed from Lynn, and we see that underneath her white cardigan sweater, the waist of her long dark blue skirt is pinned to cinch it small. She takes a tissue from a little packet and slips off a black vinyl pump to stuff it in the toe, where there is already a crumpled ball of white. Then she puts her shoe back on and sits up to snap the bag shut again.

  She can hear footsteps on the stairs before she can see anyone—clicking steps she can tell are a woman’s. She sees her face first coming up, soft brown hair cut short around a soft round face. The woman is wearing a white blouse and a tan skirt and black shoes, and the black briefcase she carries looks like a man’s. She sees Vivian right away and starts smiling like she would meeting her at a bus stop—like she knows her and has been waiting a long time to meet her. She walks over and sits down beside her and puts her hand out over Vivian’s lap to shake. She doesn’t even check that she’s right and ask Vivian’s name. She just knows.

  “Thank you for coming,” she says.

  Vivian shakes her hand, but she can’t talk yet.

  The woman says, “I know you didn’t want to do this.”

  Vivian swallows hard.

  The woman says, “That’s common, you know. It makes a world of sense that you wouldn’t want to be here. But I think you’ll be surprised at how good you feel afterward. That’s what most women report.”

  Vivian wraps the strap of her purse around her finger.

  The woman looks at her watch, a white face rimmed in gold, with a black leather strap. She says, “The courtroom isn’t going to be used for anything for another twenty minutes, but after that it will be busy all day. I think we should go in and check it out now while it’s free, before you tell me your story.”

  Vivian gets the strap very tight, like a little spring coil, and then unwinds it.

  Carla says, “I just think it’s a good idea for it to be familiar to you during the trial. You don’t want to be wondering and worrying. You don’t want to feel surprised.”

  Vivian says, “Who told you about me? How did you know to come looking for me?”

  “Your old neighbor, Mrs. Ainsley. And a few coworkers of your dad’s, too, from the school.”

  She winds the strap again. “I didn’t know so many people knew.”

  “They didn’t know for sure. They might have helped you if they did. They just suspected. Then after you ran away—you were only fourteen, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “After that they felt more certain.”

  Vivian swallows.

  The woman leans toward her a little, resting her elbows on the knees of her smooth suit, like a mother. “So what I’d like to do first is sho
w you the courtroom. So you can see where everyone is going to sit.”

  Vivian nods. “Okay.”

  She stands and collects her purse. She pulls down the back of her sweater over the bunched top of Lynn’s skirt. Then she follows the woman through the double doors.

  The jury box and witness stand and tables—everything inside is a honey-colored wood, and the floor is white linoleum. Their heels click as they walk down the aisle between the rows of benches, like church pews, that people can sit on to watch things be decided.

  Carla says, “Do you see the witness stand there? I think you should try sitting in it if you would. To get used to it. I’ll tell you everything while you sit there. So you can picture it.”

  Vivian walks toward it—a plain desk with a vinyl swivel chair behind, and another wood wall behind that. She has to take two steps up to sit. She looks down at the woman and all the empty seats and desks spread out below her.

  The woman says, “I’ll be standing here to ask you questions, and then behind that table there when your dad’s attorney is asking you his own questions. This table is the defense table.” She lays a hand on it. “So that’s where the defense attorney will sit. And your dad will be next to him. When was the last time you saw him? Your dad?”

  Vivian is rubbing a thumbnail along the edge of the desk. With her other hand she is holding the big purse in her lap. “Back when I left. When I was fourteen.”

  “You’ll have to pass by him here when you come in. He’ll be dressed in plain clothes. And he’ll be sitting in that chair.”

  Vivian nods, looking not at the woman, but at the empty chair, picturing it. “Will he be able to talk? Will I hear him talk at all?”

  “If he tries, he’ll be stopped. You won’t be in here when he sits in this witness box, and he’s not supposed to speak from that chair. And the jury will be watching him—he knows that—so he’s most likely to try to look unthreatening.”

  “But he’ll be looking at me talking.”

  “Yes.”

  Vivian stops rubbing the table edge and holds Lynn’s big purse again with both hands.