Family Law

by Gin Phillips

  “Excuse me?”

  “When did you call?”

  “Today. Yesterday. The day before.”

  Margaret let her hand fall and the door inched open. Lucia could see white carpet and stiff-backed chairs covered in pale green velvet. Figurines on a glossy end table. It seemed like the sort of living room that no one ever sat in.

  “I see,” Margaret said, and her voice was like a stranger’s. Formal. “We’ve been having dinner with my sister these last few nights. I’m sorry you went out of your way to stop by, but this saves me a phone call myself, really. I’d prefer you not see Rachel anymore.”

  “What?” Lucia asked. “Is she okay? She said nothing was—”

  Margaret shifted her keys, rattling them against her thigh.

  “She’s not hurt. But she’s a mess. Poor thing, she stayed in the shower for nearly an hour last night, just paralyzed. She does that when she’s scared.”

  No, thought Lucia. You do that when you’re scared, like when you thought Rachel’s Key Club adviser had invited your ex-husband to the Christmas party. Rachel stays in the shower when she’s pissed off at you, and she collects all the stray hairs and stuffs them down the drain and hopes that the pipes will back up, and it worked at least once after you told her she was getting heavy through the hips, because you had to call the plumber.

  “I hate that she was at the house when it happened,” Lucia said. “I hate that it happened, but I especially hate that she was there.”

  “Someone shoots a gun into your house,” Margaret said, “a millimeter from her head, nearly killing her, and you don’t even call me to explain? You can’t show that much consideration for me? For her?”

  Lucia considered that. A millimeter from her head seemed overly dramatic.

  “I did call,” she said.

  “You called after days had gone by,” Margaret said. “You left it up to her to tell me everything.”

  This Margaret bore no resemblance to the eager-to-please woman who spoke in question marks and structured entire conversations around department stores. Her confidence rattled Lucia.

  She had known from the moment Rachel drove away that she’d made a mistake. Of course she should have taken her home. Of course she should have called that night, in part to check on Rachel, but also to flatter her mother’s ego. No, that was unfair. She should have called and talked to Margaret because it was the right thing to do. But she hadn’t been able to face that conversation, and so she would pay for it now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have called earlier.”

  “As I said, I’d prefer you not to have any more contact with her,” Margaret repeated. “I’ve told her not to go by your house. I’ve told her not to call you. Surely you don’t want her to get a bullet through the head next time?”

  A movement behind Margaret. A bare foot on the white carpet.

  “Mom?” Rachel said.

  Lucia couldn’t see her face. She leaned forward, but the door blocked her view.

  “Go back to the den,” Margaret said, still facing Lucia.

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  And that was all. Rachel disappeared, never more than a quiet voice. Lucia remembered her own mother’s voice and how a single word would draw a line that could not be crossed. She was surprised, though, that Margaret was capable of drawing those lines, and she was shocked that Rachel would not step over them. Children were supposed to crave boundaries, though, weren’t they? It was comforting, on some level, to be told what to do.

  “Margaret,” she said, “do you think I don’t lie awake at night thinking about what might have happened? I love her like family. I understand if you don’t want her coming by the house for the foreseeable future. I can understand if—”

  “She’s not your family,” Margaret interrupted. “She’s not your responsibility. I don’t want her anywhere near you. There’s no telling where the lunatic might show up next. He could be anywhere. He could follow you anywhere, and if he sees her with you, he might come after her.”

  “You’re talking to me right now,” Lucia said sharply, because she couldn’t stop herself. “Doesn’t that mean you’re making yourself a target?”

  “I don’t care about me,” Margaret said.

  Something about that sentence felt more real to Lucia than anything else in the woman’s monologue.

  “I apologize,” said Lucia. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  The apology seemed to soften Margaret. Her shoulders lifted and fell.

  “I’m sorry this is happening to you,” she said. “I hope they catch whoever did it, but the truth is that you’re not my job. Rachel is.”

  Lucia leaned back, and her heel caught on the step, sending her stumbling. She grabbed at the doorframe to steady herself, fingers digging into ivy and scraping against stone. She let her hand rest flat against the rock. She thought of how wooden walls splintered so easily.

  She had replayed the scene in the sunroom endlessly, and she would have been willing to bet that she’d thought about bullets through the head—copper curls frizzing, the fragile feel of a skull under her fingers—every bit as much as Margaret had. But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe her flashes of bloody what-ifs—Evan never stopping in the doorway, never prodding them to leave the room, Rachel still sitting on that sofa when the first bullet smashed through the glass, Rachel dead, brain and bone everywhere—maybe the thoughts that haunted her were nothing compared to Margaret’s imaginings.

  It was possible that Margaret was right. Caught up in the rhythm of their argument, Lucia would have been slow to acknowledge it, but now she worked a piece of gravel loose from her shoe and let herself contemplate the other woman’s words. She thought of Rachel tucked away somewhere inside the house, barefoot and agreeable. This girl was not Bequeatha Long, ambushed by race and poverty and history and bureaucracy. It would take very little to make sure that she was safe.

  “You’re her mother,” Lucia said. “Of course, you want what’s best.”

  “You agree then?” said Margaret.

  “I do. Can I talk to her, though?”

  “Why?”

  “To explain. To let her know that—”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Margaret said. “It would only complicate things, don’t you think?”

  Lucia lay a hand on the stone again, pushing. The pressure loosened something in her shoulder.

  “If she disobeys me,” Margaret said, “I hope you’ll do the right thing. You know how she is.”

  “I do,” Lucia said.

  V.

  Rachel knocked on the door the next day. As Moxie galloped down the hallway, Lucia opened the door.

  “I couldn’t get away until now,” Rachel said. “Mom was calling in the afternoon to make sure I came home straight from school and finally today she—”

  “You heard us talking, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m so sorry she talked to you like that. I’d told her that—”

  “She’d like you to keep your distance from me,” Lucia said. “I can’t blame her.”

  “Why won’t you let me finish?” Rachel said, flapping her hands. “She’s wrong. That’s what I’m trying to say. The way her mind works—she overreacts. She can’t tell me to stay away.”

  “She can tell you,” Lucia said. “She’s your mother.”

  Rachel shook her head frantically. “Do you think it’s, like, your fault? It wasn’t. And I’m fine. Totally fine. Look, I told her that I’d keep away from your house for a while, and if we just come up with a compromise, I’m sure she’d agree to it. You just have to help me. Maybe I don’t come by here for the next month? Two months?”

  “Your mother thinks it should be more permanent,” Lucia said. “And she’s not wrong. I couldn’t—”

  “Permanent?” said Rachel.
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  “I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you,” Lucia said.

  Rachel kept shaking her head. “You mean I should stay away until they catch whoever did it, right?”

  “I promised your mother that I wouldn’t see you.”

  She’d had the words planned, anticipating this visit, and it was easier to say them than she’d expected. As she spoke, she noticed a swirl of inked words on Rachel’s hand, a cursive message from some friend, surely, maybe Tina or Nancy, and how was it that she’d never met either of them after all the stories she’d heard? She took in the ragged shorts, frayed like all the girls were wearing them, and she wondered if all the girls wrote on one another’s hands and wore shorts in December. She wondered if all the girls refused to carry umbrellas and ran bareheaded to the car in pouring-down rain, and she wondered if all the girls lapsed occasionally into bad Katharine Hepburn impersonations. The last one, she thought, was only Rachel. No one else.

  She reached out, wrapping her arms around Rachel. She kept it efficient. This was one thing she could do, and she would finish it and it would be done. She stepped back inside and closed the door. As she turned the deadbolt, Rachel was still talking.

  Rachel

  I.

  As I pulled into our garage after leaving Lucia, I saw Mr. Cleary next door watering his pansies. I waved, hoping that would be enough, but when I checked the rearview mirror, he’d put down his hose and stepped onto our driveway.

  I was going to have to say hello, and I dreaded it. The tears had dried on my face, and I was drained and empty and also I’d rushed over to Lucia’s house wearing cutoffs that Mom thought were too short even for yard work, and everything was wrong and it was hard to fake rightness.

  “Hey there,” Mr. Cleary said, as I slammed my door.

  I tugged at my shorts. “Hey, Mr. Cleary.”

  He wasn’t normally social; I couldn’t remember him ever going out of his way to speak to me. His wife and their little son used to live with him, but after the divorce Mrs. Cleary and the boy moved in with her parents, while Mr. Cleary kept the house. Mom thought that was inexcusable.

  “You have a wasp nest,” he said, pointing. “I thought you’d want to know. Winter’s a good time to take care of it.”

  I looked up, and there it was: a big, cardboardish honeycomb globbed on to the eave of the garage. Someone should spray it, but that someone would have to be me. So actually, no, I did not want to know. If Mr. Cleary wanted to be helpful, couldn’t he have taken care of the nest without ever telling me?

  The hose was laying there in his yard, gushing. His sweatshirt was too tight, and his jeans were too loose, and he was the kind of not-tall man who puffed out his chest to compensate.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I was aware I didn’t sound thankful.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  Over his shoulder, through his chain-link fence, I could see the turquoise rectangle of his swimming pool. It was the only interesting thing about his house, which was red brick, flat, and long, decorated only with gray shingles and white gutters. Compared to it, our stone cottage with its brown-and-white Tudor top looked even more charming. Instead of a cheap fence, we had a stone wall that ran from our garage to the side of the house, blocking off our backyard entirely.

  I liked the solid castle feel of our house. Stone was good, too, because it did not need repairing. Even my mother could not worry about rotting or peeling or termites.

  Mr. Cleary’s pool was too turquoise, and I turned away from it. I imagined once upon a time he had thought his boy would enjoy swimming and now there was only a boy in the house for four days out of the month. I had never seen him or Mr. Cleary or anyone else in that pool. It was a waste, having a pool when you didn’t even swim, and it was more of a waste to spend time scooping out all the leaves and bugs, and why would anyone keep their pool filled up in December?

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

  “You keep pulling at your shorts,” he said. “It’s not a wasp, is it?”

  “You’re a little obsessed with wasps,” I said, and he seemed to think that was funny.

  “At least I don’t have one up my shorts.”

  It was a stupid joke.

  “I don’t have a wasp up my shorts,” I said. “They’re just too short, and if Mom sees me wearing them in front of you—”

  “In front of me,” he repeated. He nodded once, and then he turned away, reaching for his garden hose.

  “I just mean my shorts are too short,” I said.

  I was aware that I had implied something I didn’t mean to imply, and I wasn’t even sure what it was.

  “I’m not what you would call a fashion critic,” said Mr. Cleary, drawing up the slack on the hose and looping it over his hand.

  “I know,” I said. “Mom just thinks—”

  “I know what she thinks,” he said, not looking at me. “She thinks you should be careful. Like every mother before her. And you think she’s unfair and doesn’t really love you, like every teenage girl before you.”

  “I don’t think that,” I said. The man didn’t even know how to work a garden hose.

  “No?”

  “Did they teach you that in grown-up man school where every man your age sits in a row and thinks exactly the same thing?” I said. “The seven commandments of girls? No teenage girl shall trust her mother? All teenage girls shall have the same brain?”

  It was not, actually, me who said any of that. I was sure of it as soon as the words left my mouth. I yanked at my shorts.

  “Were you just referencing Animal Farm?” Mr. Cleary said.

  “No,” I said. “Kind of.”

  “Well, you’re right. I was unfair.”

  I backed away, feeling for the latch on the iron gate. Overhead, I thought I saw a movement in the wasp nest.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve had—I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it rude as much as—”

  I didn’t hear the end of his sentence, partly because he took a long time finishing it—if he ever did finish it—and partly because I had hurried through the gate, waving over my shoulder. I was full of too many things, and I wasn’t sure what might come pouring out next.

  The gate clanged behind me, and then there was no more Mr. Cleary. There was only stone wall and crispy brown grass and ivy. The cobblestones stretched from my feet to the back door, and I leaped across them. For as long as I could remember, I’d made a point to avoid the grass growing between the cracks. I landed on stones and only stones, and I avoided the far right one that had split down the middle. I reached the single brick step, and I stood there with my hand on the screen door. Even on the best of days, I felt a shift when I took the first step inside our house: I spun myself, like a Lazy Susan, and the person I was in the outside world moved out of reach. I became a Rachel who looked for signs and portents. A Rachel who studied her mother’s face and plotted her next move.

  I could feel myself spinning, as familiar as the rhythm of hopping the cobblestones, and I hated it.

  I did not want to watch my step.

  I pushed through the door, and the tinsel rippled on the Christmas tree in the corner. The colored lights were woven too deeply into the branches, weak flickers of blue-green-red-yellow. Mom sat on the edge of the sofa, one knee bent, toes resting on the coffee table. She didn’t even look up. Her legs were slick with lotion, and she pulled her plastic orange razor steadily up her calf. Ankle to knee, ankle to knee.

  I turned down the volume on the TV, and that made her look at me.

  “What are you doing wearing those?” she asked. “It’s fifty degrees outside, for heaven’s sake, and those shorts—”

  “She won’t even talk to me,” I said.

  “Rachel, you look like—”

  “Why did you t
ell her to stay away from me?”

  Mom lifted her razor. She held it in the air.

  “You need to ask me why?” she said. “You must have heard every word I said to her. You went by anyway, I guess? After I told you that you were not allowed. You lied directly to me and told me you were going to Tina’s.”

  She pumped more Vaseline Intensive Care into her hand, slicked up her leg, and started over. This was part of her routine. Every night she shaved each leg at least four times. Sometimes she did it for an hour or more; she said she found it relaxing, even though her skin would streak red. I preferred when she did it in her bedroom behind a closed door.

  “You don’t get to tell me I can’t see her,” I said.

  “I do get to tell you that.”

  “No,” I said. I took a step closer. “You can’t lock me inside the house and slide food under my door and keep me from seeing anyone. I have a car. I’m not some little girl you can drag around.”

  “And that’s why I spoke to Lucia,” she said. “I knew she’d respect my wishes, even if you don’t. I’m your mother. It’s my job to protect you.”

  It was the first time I’d ever thought my mother and Lucia sounded alike.

  The lotion had soaked in completely, and the razor scraped against her skin. I could hear each hissing stroke. It was getting dark outside, and the moths thudded against the window.

  You can’t do this, I thought, only it was not a thought. It was a pounding in my head. This was worse than gunshots.

  “You’re not doing it to protect me,” I said.

  The blade sliced into her. She sucked in a breath, but she didn’t move her leg. I watched the blood drip into the dent of her ankle, splattering on the polished wood of the coffee table and on the floor.

  “Look what you made me do,” she said.

  Her nightgown had slipped off one shoulder, and I could see her nipple. This was a woman who practically hung upside down in front of a mirror before she left the house, making sure not the least bit of cleavage showed, not that she had cleavage. I could see her rib bones through the V of her gown. She hated even the slightest curve of her breasts to show through her blouses. She spent all day covering herself up, but at home she’d wander naked from the shower to the den, not even bothering to wear a towel. As if I weren’t even there.