Broken (12 page)

Thursday, 10:45 AM

Anna Mae lay on her bed gazing at the ceiling while David sat on his mattress near the window, his arms wrapped around his legs, his chin resting on his knees. “I heard you arguing with my mom,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I was just asking.”

“Don’t ask me anything. Leave me alone.” Anna Mae pressed a pillow against the pain in her stomach, the pain that had plagued her since the evening of Stanley’s overdose. Irritated by David’s persistent gaze, she threw the pillow in his direction. It hit the curtains behind David’s mattress. Relieved that she didn’t break the window, she got up and walked to her dresser. She could see David’s image in the mirror and she wanted to yell at him, to tell him to quit staring. Instead, she brushed her hair back, clipped it at the nape of her neck, and went to the closet. She took her blue cardigan off the hanger and put it on.

“Please don’t leave,” he pleaded. “Don’t try to find your mother.”

She walked toward the bedroom door. “You don’t understand anything. Quit bugging me.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“What does it look like?”

“Where’re you going?”

“Somewhere else!”

Anna Mae stood at the entrance of the sanctuary. Father John could have at least put some lights on.
Why did I come to the church anyway? To pray? What’s the use? If God is so good, he would not have let Stanley die.

“Anna Mae?” It was Father John.

“I can’t talk now. I have to go.”

“You just got here,” he said. The priest was now close enough to touch. She knew he just wanted to help, but that made her even angrier. When Father John put his hand on her shoulder, she stiffened. “My goodness, Annie, you’re as cold as ice.”

She shrugged his hand away.

“I’m sure,” Father John persisted, “that you’re upset about what happened to your cousin. Would you like to talk about it?”

“I’m not upset about it. It was his own fault he died.”

She expected Father John to be shocked. But he wasn’t. “Come on Annie,” he said putting his arm around her. He led her up the aisle, to the door leading out of the sanctuary. When they entered the hallway, he said, “I think we need to talk about this.”

Unable to defy the priest who had been so helpful in the past, she allowed him to guide her down the hall and into his office. But, when he led her to the big, leather armchair, she refused to sit down.

“Annie,” he said softly.

“Don’t call me Annie!” she snapped. “Only David can call me Annie.” As soon as the words were out, she wanted to apologize. However, she knew if she said another word she would burst into tears. She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to be strong, to deal with her frustration and guilt without relying on anyone. But, despite her best efforts, she dropped her head onto his chest and began to sob.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at the spot where her tears darkened his black shirt. She made a clumsy attempt to wipe away the wet spot with the sleeve of her sweater. Then she dropped, limp as a puppet, into the armchair.

He pulled a straight-backed chair as close to her as he could, turned it around, and straddled it. When she looked up at him, his image was blurred. She wiped away the tears and Father John’s face came back into focus.

“Now,” he said. “You know you can trust me. I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

Anna Mae took a deep breath, trying to dispel the fear that screamed at her to keep her mouth shut. But she couldn’t stop herself and the words gushed out like water from a broken dam.

An hour and a half later, Anna Mae and Father John sat in the Warrenvale police station’s interrogation room. On the walls of the windowless room, the faded green paint had begun to peel. The oblong table was covered with scratches and cigarette burns. Sergeant Smith, his back to a one-way mirror, sat at one end, Father John and Anna Mae at the other. Under the table, Anna Mae’s fingers were laced so tightly they burned. Father John removed his clerical collar and placed it on the table. They had been sitting in silence for a good three minutes.

The sergeant leaned his chair back, balancing on its rear legs. With his hands on the table, he began tapping his fingers. Finally he lowered the chair’s front legs to the floor, stood up, turned around, and pulled down a shade to cover the mirror.

“Okay!” he said. “I’ll make you a deal. Everything we say here will be completely confidential. If you’re as innocent as you say you are, you won’t be charged with anything. Now, tell me what you know.”

Anna Mae’s heart stopped. Sweat ran down from her armpits. Her voice sounded strange. “I didn’t mean to. I mean he made me. He was going to tell Walter.”

“Who was going to tell Walter?”

Lowering her head, she answered in a whisper.

“I didn’t hear you,” said the sergeant.

“Stanley.”

The sergeant looked up at the clock above the door. It was 3:16. “It’s okay Anna Mae. Just relax. Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t…ah…it’s ah, a long story.”

He glanced at the opaque window that was the upper half of the door to the hallway, frowned at the noise coming from the front desk, then looked back at Anna Mae. “I know you’re afraid. But you have nothing to worry about. I want you to tell me everything you know.”

Nothing to worry about? He doesn’t know it was me who gave Stanley those pills. And now I have to tell him. Because if I don’t tell him, someone else might die and that will be my fault too.

Sergeant Smith stood up and dragged his chair closer. He stood with his hand on the back of the chair looking down at Anna Mae. He waited.

“Stanley was going to tell Walter what we did at Kennywood. And about Sarah going to the hospital to see Mrs. Siminoski.”

He slid his chair closer and sat down. “And what does that have to do with the drugs?”

She looked at Father John who remained as silent as a stone.
Why don’t you help me? You know what happened. Don’t just sit there saying nothing.
Unclasping her hands, she shifted uncomfortably, certain the perspiration was clear through her sweater. The commotion at the front desk was growing louder.
Maybe they caught that drug man and I won’t have to tell Sergeant Smith anything.
She watched the door, hoping it would fly open and someone would come in and tell the sergeant that it was okay, that she could go home.

The sergeant looked at his watch. Anna Mae hadn’t said a word for a full minute. The Sergeant stood up. With his hands on the table in front of Anna Mae, he leaned down, his face close to hers, “Look, young lady! If you’re just going to waste my time...”

“He has a blue Cadillac!” Her own voice startled her.

“Stanley has a blue Cadillac?”

“No. Stanley told me about the Cadillac when I was looking for the money in the shoe.”

“Whose money? What shoe?”

“Mine. I was going to give it to Stanley. But he wanted me to go.”

“Go where?”

“To the pool room, to buy the…ah, I would have never gone, but...”

Sergeant Smith took his hands off the table and ran his fingers through his hair. His voice was low but firm. “Why don’t you just start at the beginning? Go step by step. Don’t leave anything out.”

It took almost twenty-five minutes for him to drag a rational and convincing story from Anna Mae. Finally he said, “I need to know what this drug dealer looks like. I need a description.”

She took a deep breath. “He’s—he was, ah, not too tall. His face was sort of brown. Not really brown. Sort of yellow. Yellowish?”

She looked at Father John. He nodded.

“He had a big Afro. But it wasn’t black like black people have. It was sort of, ah…not black…maybe like…it had red in it. Yeah. Red! And Black!” She shook her head.
That didn’t make any sense.

“You’re doing fine,” he said. “But you have to be more specific.”

“Reddish-brown,” she said. “That’s it. He had a reddish-brown Afro.”

The sergeant nodded and stood up. “Was he as tall as me?”

She shook her head.

He held his hand out level to his shoulder. “About that tall?”

“Yes,” she said. “He wasn’t much taller than me.”

A burst of loud voices at the front desk broke Anna Mae’s concentration. A man with a gravelly voice was yelling at someone. Anna Mae looked at the moving shadows behind the door-glass. A woman was shouting. The sergeant went to the door, opened it and yelled, “Keep it down!” Then he walked over to Anna Mae and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not unfamiliar with Walter Lipinski’s temper, so I understand completely. You’re a brave girl, Anna Mae. And you’ve been a big help.”

Anna Mae had been at the police station for less than two hours. It seemed like ten. Was it just her imagination? Did the sergeant ask the same questions over and over again? Did he think she was lying?

Father John stood up and shook Sergeant Smith’s hand. Smith turned to Anna Mae who was still sitting at the table. “I might need you to come back to pick the man you described out of the lineup.”

Stunned, Anna Mae sprung to her feet. “You said no one would know. You promised!”

“I’ll protect you,” he said. “I keep my promises.”

Father John snapped angrily, “She shouldn’t have any further involvement. Anna Mae had the courage to come here...”

“And Anna Mae, legally, is an accessory. I cut her a generous deal. No one will know she talked to us and there will be no charges pressed.”

Father John’s cheeks turned red. He grabbed his collar from the table and shoved it in his pocket.

“I repeat,” said the sergeant, his authority emphasized in the tone of his voice, “no one will know what transpired here. Anna Mae’s a good kid who got herself sucked into a bad situation. But you have to understand that we have to get this piece of shit off the streets.”

Father John grabbed Anna Mae’s hand. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”

Anna Mae’s knees threatened to buckle as he pulled her toward the door. She had never seen Father John so angry.

“Look, Father,” said the sergeant. “This young lady is naive. She didn’t realize the danger in what she was doing. I understand why she did it. She had good reason to be afraid of Walter Lipinski. He has a terrible temper and a bad reputation. It’s a wonder someone didn’t bash his brains in a long time ago. Anna Mae,” he said, placing a hand against the door jam to block her path, “I promised you before and I’ll promise you again, nothing is going to happen to you.”

The reception area was packed with a strange assortment of people. Three busty females lingered around the raised front desk. One, in a red mini skirt had her foot on a chair and was straightening her fishnet stocking. The resulting view shocked Anna Mae and caused Father John to turn away. Another wore a lacy see-through blouse with nothing underneath. On a bench, a disheveled drunk sat next to an older, bearded man whose mismatched clothing was full of holes. Two officers were shoving a young, bald, black man in handcuffs toward a door with a sign, ‘Keep Out, Police Personnel Only.’

Anna Mae looked around in amazement at a world she never knew existed. However, there was one person in that lobby that she did know existed. On the platform, seated behind a desk, his aviator glasses down on his nose, Officer Joe Murphy was watching her. She couldn’t wait to leave.

Father John pushed the brass levers on the heavy double doors that led out of the station. “Com’ on Annie. Let’s get out of here.”

She didn’t move. He turned to see what was keeping her. She looked at Father John, then at Murphy. “Nothing. It’s nothing,” she mumbled.

Anna Mae gazed out her bedroom window, watching the twilight yield to the setting sun and the orange-yellow radiance of the Bessemer capture the western sky. It was hot and stuffy and she tugged at the old double hung window. For a moment, it seemed hopelessly stuck. Then it flew up with a bang. The rush of warm air quickly engulfed her in the conflicting smells of mill smoke and summer blossoms. She could hear the distant sound of rapid-blast fireworks, most likely set off by anxious youngsters who couldn’t wait until next week’s Fourth of July celebration.

She recalled last year when she had overheard Stanley and his motorcycle friends talking about how they had gone to Ohio to buy fireworks that were illegal in Pennsylvania. They had set some off in an alley close to a row of condemned houses. One of the houses caught fire, and three homeless men had to be rescued. A fireman had broken an ankle on a rotted stairwell. Two more had been taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation. She could still hear the sidesplitting laughter as Stanley and his friends watched the newscast covering the story.

Anna Mae knew, even then, that Stanley’s repulsive behavior was rooted in a childhood as damaged as her own, a childhood of rejection and abuse. But whether it was his own fault, or hers, or the man who sold the lethal pills, Stanley didn’t deserve to die so young.

She blamed herself. She was a coward. A stronger person would have refused to buy the pills in the first place. Father John had tried to convince her that Stanley’s death was not her fault. That if she hadn’t bought those pills, Stanley would have.

She thought about what they did when they left the police station. They had gone back to Father John’s office. There he called his psychiatrist friend, Dr. Rhukov, to confirm the appointment he had made for her on Tuesday, July 2nd. She counted on her fingers.
Tomorrow’s Friday. We’ll have the viewing at the funeral home Saturday and the burial on Sunday. Then on Tuesday, July 2nd, at eleven o’clock—that’s five days from now–I’ll have to take the trolley to Pittsburgh.
The thought of traveling alone to Pittsburgh made her uneasy.

The warm breeze sent a wave of acrid smoke through the window and she covered her nose until it passed. She realized she no longer heard the distant fireworks and the sun had all but disappeared behind the hill across the river. Flaming orange clouds spanned the horizon and she suddenly felt peaceful. The angels of her childhood were still casting sparkles over the brown river water.

She heard a noise and turned around. “Supper’s ready,” Sarah said.

Anna Mae walked to the doorway. “I’m sorry. This thing about my mother makes me crazy sometimes. I had no right to take it out on you.”

Sarah smiled. “You must be hungry.”

“I’m not,” said Anna Mae. “I’ll get something later.”

When Sarah left, Anna Mae went back to the window. She gazed at the distant sparkles.
The sergeant said I was an accessory. Father John said I had courage. He said that courage was being afraid and choosing to act anyway. Am I going to have the courage to go back to the station and pick out that man in a lineup?

Maybe what I already told the sergeant was enough to help catch that creep. Maybe I’ll never have to go back.

“Where did you go?”

“David! I’ve told you a million times not to sneak up on me.”

“I didn’t sneak up. I’ve been here for five hours.”

“You have not!”

He walked to the window and she put her arm around him. “I owe you an apology, little guy. I know I’ve been a grouchy old witch.”

Normally he would have pulled away. He was too old for hugs. But he didn’t resist when she held him tighter.

“I’m sorry for being such a pest,” he said.

“You’re not a pest.”

“Yes I am.”

“No you’re not!”

“I’m a pest. And you’re a witch!”

She smiled down at him. “I’ll buy that!”