The Rules of Survival (16 page)

Authors: Nancy Werlin

BOOK: The Rules of Survival

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“All right,” I said.

I got to Mul’s before Ben did and was shown to a booth by a waitress who had a tattoo of dark blue lacework covering her slender arms from shoulder to wrist. I was so fascinated by her tattoo that I forgot to stop her from filling my coffee mug nearly all the way to the brim.

My father arrived and slipped into the booth across from me. I pushed the coffee mug toward him. “You like it black, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He downed half of it in a single gulp. He was wearing pale green hospital scrubs and a thick gray sweatshirt.

“How was your shift?” I asked.

“Not so good, actually. I’m in the critical heart unit right now, and somebody died.” He finished the rest of the coffee.

“You don’t get used to that?” I found myself curious.

“Well, yeah, you do. But you don’t, at the same time. I’d been giving this guy a bath and stuff every day for a week. I knew him a little bit. He wasn’t able to talk, but he’d kind of smile with his eyes at me and try to cooperate, try to turn himself over in bed. He wanted to do for himself.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“Yeah. Well.” My father stared intently at his menu. We sat in silence until the waitress came back to take our orders. I got eggs and toast; Ben got only oatmeal and juice. I waited. And eventually Ben said, “So, you’re friends with Bobbie now?”

“Yes.”

“How’s that?”

“Fine. She’s been good, actually. Good to have around.”

Ben rubbed at his eyes with both hands.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I said finally.

“Yeah. Listen. That guy—Murdoch McIlvane. I had a long talk with him the other day.”

I sat up straight. I had been wondering if Murdoch was going to talk to my father as he had said he would, as he had talked with Bobbie. “You did?” I said. “What about?”

Ben was looking into the depths of his refilled coffee mug. “About what you said to me in September. When we took that walk together by Columbia Point, you said your mother was getting more, well, more unstable.”

“So?” I said.

“So . . . well, what do you think now?” Suddenly, words came streaming out of him quickly, urgently. “Do you stand by what you told me? It’s not that I didn’t hear you then, Matt, it’s that—it’s that . . . I don’t know. But have things gotten even worse now? What’s your take on what’s going on with your mother? I keep remembering what you said that time . . . about when you were in the car with her. That it wasn’t safe. And now, Bobbie says she’s worried, too.”

I tried to sort all this out. I wasn’t clear on exactly what Ben was asking. And part of me just wanted to know what he thought of Murdoch, where they had met, what had been said between them.

My heart was racing.

“Yes, I stand by what I said. She’s crazier than ever. You know about her lies about Murdoch?”

Ben nodded. “I know.”

The waitress brought our breakfast. I looked at my toast and scrambled eggs. I felt too excited—too something—to eat. But I accepted more coffee, not even caring when the waitress overfilled my mug again. I added three lumps of sugar, and sipped at it.

Ben put his head down and ate his oatmeal in quick small swallows, his mouth and throat moving continuously until he was done. He put down his spoon and stared unhappily at me. He said, “This is bad.”

“What did Murdoch say?” I asked.

“Pretty much what you said.” He hesitated. “And that we should all think about how it would feel if one of you kids really got hurt. And wasn’t it better to err on the side of safety.”

I said carefully, “And what do you think about that?”

My father stared at me. “What kind of a man do you think I am? What kind of father?” He pushed his empty dish of oatmeal aside and buried his face in his hands. “Jesus.”

I didn’t answer, and after a minute, Ben shook himself like a dog and leaned his elbows on the table. Not sure why I said it, I muttered, “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “No. I am. Matthew, I haven’t been much of a father to you. Or Callie. Don’t think I don’t know it. I just—I didn’t know what to do.”

Do you now?
I wondered. I said: “And Emmy.”

He winced. But he looked straight at me and said, “Or Emmy. I know. I’m going to do better. We’re figuring things out right now, but I want you to know. I’m on board. I’m going to do better.”

We,
he’d said.
On board,
he’d said.

And he’d actually said your name, Emmy.

The waitress had returned. “You still working on that?”

I shook my head. “I’m not hungry after all. Sorry.”

I watched my father watch her lacy blue arms as she stacked our dishes. “Anything else I can do for you?” she asked. “More coffee?”

“No, thanks,” said Ben. She left.

Ben started talking fast again. “I’m thinking of leaving the hospital. I just had an interview with this home care nursing agency. They’re going to offer me a job, and they said that if I wanted to get an advanced nursing degree, become a nurse practitioner, they’d pay for it so long as I agree to work for them once I have it. That’s a really good deal. I could work weekends for them now as an RN—you know, taking care of sick people in their homes. I could go to school during the week. And then, once I’m an NP, I can earn a lot more. That would change everything. It would be a hard year or two while I’m going to school, but after that, I could get a bigger place to live. One with enough room for you guys. Maybe I could even buy a house.”

I stared at him. What was he saying? That he’d be a rich nurse practitioner—which I knew was almost like a doctor—and we could all live with him? That he wanted to do that?

Who was this man? What drug had Murdoch given him?

“What do you think?” said Ben.

“You might try to get custody of all three of us?” I asked. I stressed the words
all three
.

Ben didn’t flinch. “It could work out. I’m hoping it will. Murdoch feels we can assemble enough evidence against Nikki for me to get custody.”

There was this one whole glorious minute in which I allowed myself to imagine it. I didn’t feel the kind of joy that I felt when I fantasized about Murdoch being our father. But still, I felt something. Something good. The three of us—the four of us—safe. Could it work?

But I knew better.

“No,” I said. “It won’t work out. Because Emmy isn’t your daughter, and Nikki would prove it if she had to. And Callie and I won’t leave without Emmy. So, even if she let us go legally—and I guess she’d let me; she hates me now—she would never, ever give Emmy up. Even if she didn’t want her, she wouldn’t give her up.”

Ben shrugged. “Murdoch thinks that we could force her,” he said.

CALLIE

I tried to be extremely good after that, while I waited for something to happen. I began making the best grades of my life; I was on honor roll. I took meticulous care of you, Emmy. Through someone Aunt Bobbie knew, I even got a minimum-wage job on weekends handing out towels at the L Street gym. They let me exercise there for free, and I did, and was pleased at the results. I had muscles, suddenly, and I even saw some of the girls there noticing. Noticing me.

Maybe someday . . . maybe soon . . . what a luxury it would be, I thought, to be able to focus on flirting with a girl.

However, Callie wasn’t doing too well. I had always relied on her, but somehow, right then, I could see that she was near to breaking. It was ironic. Salvation had never seemed so close.

You know how it is, with someone you know well. You don’t really look at them, so you don’t notice things like what they’re wearing or if they have a smudge on their face. You see what you expect to see.

But I remember really seeing Callie one morning. We were coming down the stairs together, and there was this moment when she stood, her eyes blank, under the exposed fluorescent lightbulb on the second-floor landing.

Her cheekbones stood out sharply. I’d never seen dark circles under someone’s eyes before, but Callie had them, and somehow, her eyes had gotten larger than I remembered. Also, she’d cut her own hair, and badly. It stood up in little hills and pressed down in little mats all over her head so that it looked darker. It wasn’t hair gel giving it shape, either. Actually, her hair just looked dirty.

I blurted, “Are you okay?”

She rolled those big eyes at me in scorn.

I grabbed her hand. I pulled her downstairs and out onto the street. And there, I poured out everything Ben had said, everything I had learned about the alliance that had formed between Murdoch and Aunt Bobbie and Ben, and their secret plan to somehow force Nikki to give up custody of all of us—plus Ben’s new willingness to take Emmy, and his ideas about becoming a nurse practitioner. She listened to it all without saying a word, and then she just shrugged.

“Callie?” I said. “Didn’t you hear what I just told you?”

She shook her head. “No. I didn’t hear a thing. Not a word. And I don’t want to hear it, Matt. I’m so tired of your fantasies and your dreams.” And then she put her hands into the straps of her backpack and turned and ran as fast as she could away from me.

“Callie!” I shouted after her. “I’m telling the truth!”

But she didn’t turn back. She kept running, right down the sidewalk.

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS

All this time, Nikki continued stalking Murdoch. She followed him in her car, watching whatever he did, and with whom. There were the calls, too—his home phone ringing repeatedly in the middle of the night. He allowed all of this to happen, keeping track in a notebook of three-a.m. calls and empty voice mail messages and of when he saw her or her car behind him. Periodically, he reported it to the police, who would usually give Nikki another warning. “I stopped ignoring her. I started getting these things on the books,” Murdoch said to me later. “One violation after another, all of them small, but each one lengthening her police record. Also, I got pretty friendly with Officer Brooks. We even went out for a beer a few times. He’s a nice guy.”

At one point, after Nikki had strayed twice—and provably—inside the hundred yards’ distance that she was supposed to keep away from Murdoch, Officers Brooks and Coughlin picked her up and she ended up spending two nights in jail. That was in December, on the weekend before Christmas, which was on a Monday that year.

Do you remember, Emmy? For us, it was a wonderful weekend. Aunt Bobbie had gone to the hearing and came home Friday afternoon with official permission from the judge—and from Nikki herself—to care for all three of us. The doors of Aunt Bobbie’s apartment, and of ours, were thrown open, and the two floors felt like one big space, one big house. The college kids who rented the first-floor apartment had all left for the holidays, and so we felt completely free in that house in a way we never had before. There was lots of running up and down the stairs, and lots of shouting up and down, too. You were playing some game that involved taking only giant steps; Callie was smiling again, even at me. Then, that evening at seven o’clock, the doorbell rang. I was the one who answered the door.

It was Ben, hauling a Christmas tree, a five-footer. “Hi, Matt.” He smiled, even though behind the smile he looked a little nervous. “Bobbie told me it was okay to come over.”

I was pretty stunned, seeing him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him at our house. “Yeah. Um . . . you need help with that thing?”

“No, but if you’ll take my car keys, there’s more stuff in the trunk to bring in. Just a few bags. I’m parked right across the street.” He motioned with his chin.

I took his keys, but helped him first to bring the tree up one flight and into Aunt Bobbie’s living room. As we entered, Callie said “Daddy” in enormous surprise—and then pleasure. And you, Emmy, you stared at Ben, and then clutched desperately at Aunt Bobbie’s leg like a child much younger than you were. Aunt Bobbie heaved you up and held you, while you peeked once or twice at Ben. Finally, Callie broke the spell by saying pragmatically: “Where should we set up the tree?”

“Who’s that?” you whispered to me, as Ben turned to survey the room. “Callie’s daddy?”

Silence again. I didn’t know where to look. And then Ben came forward and looked right in your face. “I’m Ben,” he said. “I’m Callie and Matt’s daddy, yes. And your friend.”

You held out your hand like a princess. Ben took it gently and shook it.

“Hello, Ben,” you said. And then you added thoughtfully: “Murdoch’s my friend, too.”

“And mine,” said Ben gravely.

“Good,” you said.

It was suddenly too much, too good—I had to leave the room. “I’ll go get that other stuff,” I blurted.

I ran downstairs to Ben’s car, where I found boxes of ornaments, obviously newly purchased, and another bag full of wrapped presents.