Liberty Falling

by Nevada Barr

  No more attacks came. Breath returned in squeaking, niggardly drafts. When she was able, she pushed onto her hands and knees and crawled to the island’s edge. Futilely, she tried to wipe clear eyes blurred with dirt and trauma. He’d taken the boat. Under the perfect cover of party boat music, he was motoring away.

  Not because it would do any good but because she was hurting and, though the incident was over, shaken, Anna sought out Andrew.

  He did not disappoint. He was strong and handsome and calm. First he ascertained that she wasn’t going to die in the immediate future; then he checked the island to make sure the boatman had worked alone, Liberty’s residents were unharmed and no damage had been done to the resource. The statue was locked for the night. Built on Fort Wood, she was a fortress unto herself. The lady was unhurt.

  Anna waited at the ranger station. Her back was killing her. She didn’t want to stand, sit, lie down or be alone. Until Andrew returned she leaned against the wall, her feet braced on the bottom of his desk, keeping her spine, a conduit of pain, in perfect alignment. Between blows to shoulder, back and temple, she believed it to be the only thing holding her together. The wall’s support lessened the pressure.

  Andrew came back and she allowed herself to be helped to a chair. He retrieved the first aid kit from the basement and gently cleaned the abrasion the kick to the face had left on her cheekbone. While he worked she told him what happened. When she described the assault to her person his brown eyes glowed with an anger that warmed her heart. Come first light, he would search the crime scene, but both doubted he’d learn much.

  Cotton balls streaked with blood and dirt began to pile up on the desk. “You might get away without a black eye,” Andrew said, surveying the damage. “The kick didn’t land square. Looks like it glanced off, taking skin with it.” He held her face in his hands. Anna could smell a faint promise of cologne. Not the usual stuff, but sweet and spicy. Maybe it was just the smell of the man. As he examined her wound, his face was close to hers, his skin flawless, eyelashes long. But she knew she’d break in a million pieces if she so much as raised her arms. Andrew never knew what a near miss he had.

  “Let me take a look at your back,” he said. A considerate EMT, he walked around the chair rather than making her turn. With the detachment of a physician—or a black man touching a white woman in a racist world—he lifted the tank top, clinically careful not to expose too much of her.

  A low whistle, then: “You’ve got to see this. It’s perfect. Perfect, heck—it’s evidence. Stay put. I’m getting the Polaroid.”

  He headed for the stairs. Gingerly, Anna raised herself from the chair. An eight-by-eleven-inch mirror was hung near the door so rangers could check to see if their hats were on straight before exposing themselves to the eye of the public.

  Having removed it from its nail, she propped it against the telephone on the desk. Out of deference to Andrew’s sensibilities, she held her top over her bare breasts after pulling it off. Each movement hurt, reminding her how frail individual components of the body are, how fortunate she was not to live with pain on a daily basis, how it behooved her to be more careful.

  Agonizing craning of the neck and twisting of the torso brought her back into view, and with it, Andrew’s evidence. Below her right shoulder blade, extending nearly to her kidney, was a bruise, a bootprint, the tread blood-purple, the heel black and angry red.

  “An inch higher and your shoulder blade would have shattered. Two inches lower and he would have ruptured a kidney. This is a vicious person.” The words were civil, the delivery icy. Andrew was cut out to defend the weak and rescue fair maidens. “Hold still.” Anna obliged and he snapped half a dozen pictures.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Size ten, ten and a half?”

  “Sixteen,” Anna said, and he laughed.

  “A work boot?”

  “No.” Andrew politely turned his back. Anna put her top back on. “An army boot.”

  The boot she’d seen in the crowd the day Agnes died.

  The boot she’d seen in the subway when she was pushed.

  And, she didn’t doubt, the boot that had kicked the stairs from under her.

  24

  ANNA HAD SOAKED and she had slept for a couple of hours. Patsy awakened her with a cheery “Happy Fourth of July,” then, with the pronouncement “There is no rest for the wicked—or the ambitious,” rushed off to work on Mrs. Weinstein’s political event. The bathroom mirror gave Anna a damage report. As Andrew had predicted, she was spared the cosmetic misery of a black eye, but her cheekbone was an angry purple shot through with red abrasions, tender to the touch, battered bad enough it hurt to close her teeth.

  The bootprint on her back had ripened to perfection. Bruises were blue-black ringed with red. Andrew had omitted the worst of the what-ifs. Two inches to the left and it might have snapped her spine. Soft-tissue injuries took the longest to heal. Anna would feel this boot for a long time.

  This morning it felt as if the son of a bitch had stomped clear through to her belly. Muscles had screamed, bones ached, viscera roiled. Nausea had racked her cells, ruling her body with toxic tides.

  Today she wanted to see Molly; she had a kayaking date with the good doctor, and another with Hatch’s dad for Scotch and memories. Staring at her reflection in the glass, she felt far too old for any of those things, too banged-up to face crowds, noise or Molly’s angry compassion when she saw what her only sister had allowed the world to do to her. Thoughts of Robert Louis Stevenson and the sofa had nearly seduced her into canceling everybody, when Mandy’s puffy face appeared around the bathroom door. “Oh,” she said, letting annoyance shine through feigned surprise. “It’s you. I thought by now you would have gone back to wherever.”

  “Soon.

  “Good. I hope you’ve got plans for the Fourth. I’m hanging out in my house, on my couch. Maybe I can get a little privacy.”

  “Big plans,” Anna said. “I’ll be out of your way before you can say ‘Miss Manners.’”

  “You’re a laugh riot.” Mandy slouched off in the direction of the kitchen.

  Mentally, Anna apologized to the couch for abandoning it to a fate worse than death.

  Dressing was an ordeal. She’d never stopped to think how many muscles it took to pull a shirt over one’s head.

  Because of the facial contusions, makeup was out. Since raising her arms higher than her shoulders set her back to spasming, she couldn’t do anything with her hair. Jamming on Agnes Abigail’s spud hat, Anna decided David Madison would have to take her as she was or not at all.

  Movement helped, as did the already intense rays of the midmorning sun. She knew that when she stopped she’d feel rotten, but she enjoyed the slight reprieve. Liberty Island was mobbed. It was the lady’s day of tribute; she stood for the dreams formalized on Independence Day. Since joining the National Park Service fourteen years ago, Anna had worked every Fourth of July. It was a big day in the outdoor recreation business. Having no family, she’d been glad to volunteer to work the holiday. Other rangers got to stay home with their kids, Anna made time and a half, everybody won. Winding her way through the masses, trying not to get her fragile frame jostled, she realized she preferred it that way. Working on holidays, one wasn’t required to have fun. There was no pressure, no disappointments. And she usually had a wonderful time. Park visitors fed her. She was part of a dozen parties but owed allegiance to none. If the gathering was boring, she moved on. If it was too rowdy or offensive, she arrested everybody.

  MOLLY MADE THE long hot journey worth every insult to Anna’s bruised body. She was sitting up and had color in her cheeks. A woman’s eyes could tell the blush was laid on from without, not generated from within, but its application bespoke a desire to live. Frederick was there, of course. It was a small wonder his rear end hadn’t grown to the chair. Anna was glad to see him. Glad to see his shirt was pressed and his shorts clean and well fitting.

  Easing down onto the cool linoleum, the wall
bracing her aching back, she told the story of her adventure. With loving ears to hear, she found herself feeling sorry for the woman who got stomped. Molly gave her usual lecture on the benefits of getting a real job where clients rarely tried to kill you. Frederick’s eyes glinted with a need to pulverize the man who had battered her, and Anna felt at home.

  Once her tale was digested, Molly rang for the nurse and demanded Dr. Madison be summoned. By the time Anna realized it was for her, it was too late. Madison shined his pen-light in her eyes, palpated her spine, gave her a handful of Advil and a prescription for Valium to help with the spasms. He was a conscientious physician, so the scrip was for ten tablets, nonrefillable. Enough to get her through a few days, not enough to get her hooked.

  “Are we still on for two-thirty?” he asked as he was leaving.

  “Two-thirty,” Anna agreed.

  “Maybe kayaking is not such a good idea,” he said, thinking of her injuries. “Maybe we should just tuck in for an at-home.” He winked, said, “Meet me in my office. By the way, nice Idaho potato,” and was gone.

  Anna had forgotten she still wore Agnes Abigail’s cap. She left it on. By now she’d have such a severe case of hat hair that hiding it was a cosmetic courtesy.

  Shortly thereafter Frederick excused himself, pleading an errand Anna knew he didn’t have. He kissed Molly tenderly on the forehead, gave Anna a pointed look and left. It was payback time.

  “So. You want to marry him or what?” Anna asked after the door closed.

  Molly laughed, a weak but wonderful sound. “Is it too late to pack you off to finishing school?”

  “Sorry,” Anna said. “The last few days I’ve been feeling rushed. No time. No time for niceties. No time for anything.”

  Using the wall, she crawled to a standing position and creaked over to the abandoned chair. The cool of the floor, so pleasurable when she first sat down, had chilled and stiffened her.

  “Anxious?” Molly asked.

  “Sort of. Impending doom, just stress.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Anna started to, the habit of a lifetime, then stopped. “You’re not going to weasel out that easily. We are talking about you. So. What’s the plan?”

  Molly sighed and leaned back against the pillows. She closed her eyes and suddenly the rouge looked garish, her face old. “It’s not that simple,” she said wearily.

  “Take a stab at it.”

  “Frederick . . . If I ...” Without opening her eyes, Molly raised a translucent hand to her brow, pressed her temple with her fingertips. Anna stifled the urge to ask if she was okay, if she was getting a headache. This was one conversation she didn’t want to derail. “I’ve felt . . . When Frederick ...”

  Anna had never seen her lose her sharpness of intellect. Under other circumstances it would have scared her. At present she was sure Molly wasn’t suffering a stroke or early-onset senile dementia. Molly was unable to say what she needed to without mentioning the unacceptable fact that she’d fallen in love with her little sister’s boyfriend. With the meat of the conversation gutted, all she had left were paltry word scraps.

  “Let me try,” Anna said. “You were attracted to Frederick when you first met, but since he and I were an item, you banished him to the northward of your affections. There you left him, in exile, because you liked me best.”

  “I still like you best,” Molly said with a faint, sweet smile.

  Anna wanted to thank her, respond in kind, but couldn’t. She forged ahead. “Even after Frederick and I split up you continued to ignore him.”

  “I didn’t really think about him,” Molly said. “It’s not like I pined away. He was just . . . just one of those things. Ships in the night.”

  “I know you didn’t. He was mine, therefore he was dead to you. Buried and forgotten.” Anna stopped a moment. “I really appreciate that. It means a lot.” Two short sentences containing heartfelt feelings. Why did she have to dig emotional truths out of her liver with a pickax, one nugget at a time? “Can I go on with my hypothesis?” she asked irritably.

  “I wait with bated breath.”

  “You get sick. Frederick comes running. I come running. What’s a sister to do? Then Frederick turns on the charm and, underneath that charm, you sense a deep and committed love for you. The old attraction returns, grows into something more. But you still like me best. And though I say to go ahead, your shrinky training tells you this is my ego talking, me being self-sacrificing, that deep down I am hurting. How am I doing so far?”

  Tears leaked from under Molly’s closed lids. “You missed your calling,” she said. “You’d have made a hell of a psychiatrist.”

  “Here’s the end of the story. This is not hypothesis. This is fact. Don’t analyze it, just hear it.”

  “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?”

  “Right. This is a major cigar. There is no deep down. I’m not hurting. Not only am I not hurting, I’m hoping. I want you to be happy. I want to know somebody is taking care of you—” Molly started to protest. “Not a word,” Anna snapped. “I want to know somebody is taking care of you because I’m not good at it.”

  More slow tears. Anna felt her own eyes pricking and shoved the heels of her hands in the sockets to dam the flow. The attempt was foiled. She banged her cheekbone and water gushed from both eyes. “Damn,” she muttered. Molly opened her eyes. “Hit my cheekbone,” Anna said.

  “Right.” Molly closed her eyes again, smiling in a way that engendered in Anna a childish desire to pinch her. The second hand on the wall clock jerked its way around the numbers.

  “You know why you’ve never been able to take care of me?” Molly asked.

  “Because I’m a selfish twit?”

  “Because I have never let you. I cheated you of that because I needed to feel strong, in control. When I got so sick, I wanted to go ahead and die. Not because life wasn’t worth living but because I knew I couldn’t fool myself I was in control. I was scared to death. I’m okay with it now.”

  “Psychiatrist, shrink thyself?”

  Disappointment shadowed Molly’s face. Anna was hiding behind cheap humor.

  She tried to exonerate herself. “Thank you for telling me that,” she managed.

  Another spastic circuit of the second hand. In half an hour Anna had to leave to meet David. “Do you think you were able to retire the superwoman cape because Frederick was here?” Anna asked.

  “And you were here.”

  The exchange had tired Molly. Anna could see weariness, the words sapping her strength. Time to drop the subject. One more question: “What are you going to do?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Anna left it at that. Frederick returned a quarter of an hour later looking so frightened, excited and expectant that Anna was sorry all she could give him was an I-did-my-best shrug. The two of them made desultory conversation about subjects neither was interested in, while Molly drifted in and out of a doze. At two-twenty, Anna said, “I’d better go. Big date with the doctor.”

  When she didn’t push herself out of the chair to leave, Frederick said, “You don’t seem too thrilled with the prospect.”

  “I’m not. I should be.”

  “Tired from the night’s fisticuffs?”

  She shook her head. “General weirdness.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “With me no doubt. He’s a good guy. Too long in the city—I’ve come down with chronic heebie-jeebies.”

  Frederick drummed the backs of his long skinny legs against the linoleum. He’d taken Anna’s customary place on the floor. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly good timing for me to be casting aspersions on your gentleman friends. Could be misconstrued, don’tcha know.”

  “But ...” Anna prodded when he didn’t continue.

  “But nothing, really. You know how women can see things in other women men don’t have a clue about? Like some gal’s on the make, or lying about her face-lift? Men
are no different. The takes-one-to-know-one thing. Madison sets off my alarms. My snake alarms.”

  “Nothing specific?”

  “I should have kept my mouth shut. He saved Molly’s life. He’s probably a great guy.”

  “But the snake alarms.”

  “Buzzing.”

  Anna levered herself out of the chair. “It’s all yours,” she said. “I’d better be going.”

  “Anna?” She stopped at the door. “Check out the Persian Kittens website if you get a minute.”

  “Sure,” Anna promised, hoping there was nothing wrong with Rani.

  DR MADISON WAS late. Like cops and firemen and other emergency personnel, doctors’ jobs started out making them late. Then late got to be a habit and the job an excuse as often as not. Anna rocked back and forth in his chair, feeling each and every bruise. Two forty-five. No David. Nothing on his desk amused her. She punched a computer key and the screensaver, a dizzying array of ever-changing geometries, winked out, replaced by his menu. She had a minute, maybe more. Having clicked on his AOL she went to “favorite places.” Persian Kittens was still bookmarked. A scatter of clicks and computer fiddlings and she was at—or in, or on, she was never sure—the website.

  Not a kitten in sight, and near as she could tell, the rugs the “models” were posed on weren’t real Persian. Cyberporn. She’d heard of it but never had had cause to give it much thought. Closing out the site, she processed what she’d seen. She had nothing against porn per se. Most of it was demeaning to women, but men liked to look at naked ladies. Politics, morality and ethics weren’t going to change that. What bothered her was that Madison had been so quick to accept the accolades heaped on him when she’d mistakenly praised him for looking up kittens, going the extra mile for a patient.

  Not really a big deal. Everybody took a freebie now and again. Besides, what was he going to do? Tell her, “Oh no, that was a hard-core porn site I like to visit when I’m supposed to be working”? Too much to expect of anybody human.