The Rules of Survival (20 page)
Read The Rules of Survival Online
Authors: Nancy Werlin
“That’s great,” I said. “Congratulations. I know you’ll do really well.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. He looked pleased. “It’s going to be hard, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s amazing to look ahead and think about having my own patients. I’ll be able to write prescriptions and everything. And, well, you know. I’d like to buy a house. In a few years, it should be possible.”
“Well,” I said, “this apartment is looking good, too. I’m impressed.”
Ben shrugged, and then grinned a little. “We’re doing okay so far. I couldn’t manage without Callie, though.”
“I know,” I said. Guilt surged through me again, but all I said was, “You and Emmy doing okay?”
Ben’s shoulders moved uneasily. “We’re getting to know each other. You know. One thing that’s helping—she does love her new bedroom.”
“Ben?” I said.
“What?”
“Thanks.”
Our eyes met. Something was said that couldn’t be said aloud, not with you so nearby, Emmy. It had to do with his not being your father but stepping up to the plate anyway. And listen, Emmy, I know things didn’t end up with you living with him and Callie, and I’m not sorry—Aunt Bobbie loves you very much, and she’s kin. She was meant to be your mother. I believe that.
“No worries, Matt,” said Ben. He put a hand on my shoulder, lightly. Then I followed him into the kitchen, where something was smelling good.
It turned out that Ben was making spaghetti with meatballs. I’d had some soup at Bobbie’s just before Murdoch came to get me, but as I sniffed the air, I discovered that I was hungry again. Hungry and almost happy, for a little while.
43
HOMECOMINGS
As I think about it, I now realize that there were a lot of different homecomings for Nikki over the years. She was always disappearing for a night, or a weekend, or a few days, and we never knew what she’d be like when she came back. What we knew was that her homecoming was always the cue for a play—an elaborate production of live theater.
I was the director of our theater, arranging the stage set, telling you and Callie to take your places, prompting you to do or say this or that, whisper-feeding you lines of dialogue and bits of business. “Don’t forget to hug her!” “Go get her some Advil and a glass of water, fast.” “Ask her if she’ll help you with your homework later, she likes that.” “Stop stomping around, she’ll go ballistic.”
Of course, I had to act in the play as well as direct it. And all the while I was directing, and acting, I also had to gauge the reaction of our audience of one—Nikki—and make adjustments in our play so that it would suit her mood. Her picture of who she was.
Sometimes she wanted to play devoted mom, reading and playing with her children. There were times when she wanted to lie on her bed in silence, while we tiptoed in and out bringing her coffee or Chunky Monkey ice cream or whatever it was she wanted. Sometimes, like with the Portuguese seafood paella, she would tear the kitchen apart making some elaborate meal that we’d need to choke down. And of course, there were the times she didn’t come home alone, and the audience for our little play would be expanded by one . . . or even two. Once, she brought a whole party home. We didn’t put on a play that night. I grabbed you guys and barricaded us in our room.
I knew every move, every motion in every possible scenario, and all the plays melted together into an endless onstage nightmare, all of them beginning with the sound of the downstairs door slamming open, and her high heels clacking on the stairs. They had all been alike—even the time she came home from jail at Christmas to find us with Aunt Bobbie—because all the previous homecomings had revolved around her. Her and her needs, as I tried to anticipate them.
This last homecoming of hers was different. This time, I was the only one there. And I didn’t need to do any acting at all.
44
THIS HOMECOMING
Aunt Bobbie had meant to be present, and she would have been, if Nikki had arrived home when we thought she would, in the evening. But instead she came in the middle of the afternoon. Aunt Bobbie was still at work. The downstairs tenants were out, too. I was alone in the house, in Bobbie’s apartment. Our apartment.
I had some music on, something sort of loud and pulsing, and I was trying simultaneously to focus on my homework and the music, so that I would forget about Nikki’s intended arrival that night. Aunt Bobbie and I had opted for a plan to lock ourselves in and say nothing to Nikki until we had to.
Anyway, the music meant that I didn’t actually hear her come home. What I heard was the screaming.
Nikki had an amazing scream—and come to think of it, you do, too, Emmy, although yours is maybe a seven on a one-to-ten scale, and hers was a twelve. Her scream started high and keening, and then it deepened in tone and turned into a blast like a foghorn. She could breathe through her nose like a dragon and keep it up for minutes.
The scream insinuated itself between me and the music. Until I took out my earbuds, though, I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was the phone.
Then I knew. She was upstairs. Early. Already. And before I even thought, I leaped to my feet and was staring up at the ceiling, my heart pounding in the old rhythms. My impulse was to go to her—to find out what was wrong, to try to make it better—and to do it just as fast as I could. I took a few steps toward the door, and the only reason I stopped was because I was suddenly hyperventilating.
She kept screaming, and ten feet below her, I bent double and tried to get air into my lungs. And as soon as I had succeeded, as soon as I had enough control over my arms and legs, I unlocked the door of Aunt Bobbie’s apartment and raced upstairs.
I could not help it. What if she’d fallen and was bleeding or something?
I slammed through Nikki’s open door. And as I did that, she finally stopped screaming.
She was standing in the upstairs hallway, just a few steps from the door. A few steps from me. For a long, long moment, we just looked at each other. In the periphery of my vision, I noticed that she had brought her pile of mail up from downstairs, where we had been collecting it for her all this time. It was scattered all over the floor of the hall. She was standing on some of it in her stocking feet.
She smiled. It was the kind of smile that doesn’t touch any part of the face except the mouth. “Hello, Matthew,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.
I inhaled. Something stank, and it was Nikki. The mingled stench of dried and fresh sweat came off her in waves. There was also something else that I couldn’t identify. She was wearing the same clothing she’d worn on the night of the accident with Julie: heavy black jeans with her trademark Celtic cross belt and a tight green sweater that was visibly dirty. Her feet were clad in sheer black socks, and as she came closer to me, swaying a little as she walked, I realized that her feet were one of the prime sources of the previously unidentified odor. I wrinkled my nose.
“They gave me back my own clothes,” Nikki said, as if she could read my mind. “But they didn’t bother to wash them. Are you offended, Matt?”
She stood directly in front of me and looked up at me, and I realized with a jolt that I was taller than her now. When had that happened? And her hair—it was short. It was cut in a tight, unattractive cap on her head. I could see gray in it. I studied her face. There were new grooves running deeply across her forehead, matching the graying hair.
She’s getting old, I thought, amazed.
“What?” Nikki said mockingly. “No hug?”
I don’t know what came over me. The habit of obedience? I reached out, even as my throat closed up at the smell of her. I put my arms around Nikki and I hugged her, tight. One second. Two.
She was rigid in my arms. Then she pushed at me, her hands worming their way in front of my shoulders so she could shove me away harder. I let her. I stepped back.
She was grinning now. It sent a chill through me. And all at once it didn’t matter that I was taller than her, that she was showing her age—or even that all-important thing, that we were escaping her. Fear of her closed in on me again. Maybe Murdoch and Ben and Bobbie were all wrong about our being safe. She was back now. Who knew what she’d do?
My old pattern of trying to pacify her was still in control of me. “We didn’t think you’d be home until later,” I said.
She curled her lip. “Like you care.”
“Well,” I said. “I have homework to do.”
I turned to go.
And Nikki attacked. She threw herself at my back, hanging on me with one arm while she clawed at my face with the other. Pain ripped through my cheek. Her weight was heavy on my back. I felt one of her legs twist up as she tried to kick me in the groin with her heel.
She did all this in complete silence.
I was the one who yelled. I bucked, trying to throw her off my back, trying to get a grip on her wrists, trying to turn my face, to at least shield my eyes from her nails. For a few weird moments, though, I didn’t use all my strength against her. All those muscles I’d worked so hard to develop at the gym were momentarily useless. Later on, I realized that I’d been trying not to hurt her.
Then some survival force in me took over. I reached up and grabbed her arms, and managed to duck. To my surprise, she flipped over my head and landed with a thump on her back on the carpet in front of me.
I was amazed and shocked at what I had just done. I wasn’t just taller than Nikki now. I was stronger.
And yet, it didn’t matter. Fear pulsed in me still.
On the carpet, Nikki began to roll over. She was clearly unhurt. I didn’t wait. I jumped right over her and ran as fast as I could, down the hall, through the door, down the stairs to Aunt Bobbie’s. I was almost at Aunt Bobbie’s door when Nikki broke her silence.
She screamed obscenities. All of them were about me. But at least she didn’t follow me down the stairs.
I entered Aunt Bobbie’s at breakneck speed, whirled around, and slammed the door shut after me. An instant later, I had thrown the dead bolt home.
I stood for a minute on the other side of the door. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. There didn’t seem to be enough air to breathe. I had to put a hand on the door to keep myself upright.
She kept up the screams for ten minutes or more.
Finally, she stopped. Only then did I become aware of the throbbing pain in my face. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Three deep, bleeding gouges ran from the corner of my right eye nearly to my mouth.
45
WAR ZONE
Over the next few weeks, Nikki quickly showed her dedication to making the house totally uninhabitable.
You could count on her screaming or playing music loudly at two or three in the morning. At any time of the day or night, there might be a bout of thudding and smashing that made Aunt Bobbie moan helplessly.
There was a constant stream of late-night visitors. They were mostly men, mostly drunk or high, they always came in at least twos or threes, and they’d party above our heads until the police came. It wasn’t just us calling the police. It was the college boys who rented the first floor, and the neighbors on both sides and across the street.
One soft spring evening, one of the kitchen chairs crashed out of the front bay window of Nikki’s apartment. It landed in the street in pieces, narrowly missing a neighbor’s Honda Civic. I had to go out and clean it up while the neighbors gathered to ask me what was going on, to lecture me, or to pity me.
Nikki didn’t have her window repaired. Instead, she just had some guy cover the broken glass with wooden planks. The planks had a few four-letter words on them in phosphorescent orange spray paint, facing the street. The neighbors were not happy about this, either. Aunt Bobbie took to scurrying between the house and her car with her head bowed and her hand hovering before her face, as if that would make her unrecognizable.
The college boys moved out of the first floor on two days’ notice. Without a word about the lease terms, Aunt Bobbie wrote them a check to return their security deposit. She called the Realtor about finding new tenants, but Southie is a small, tight community, and the Realtor knew what was going on. She claimed that she would only be able to rent the apartment at a huge discount. Aunt Bobbie said that was unacceptable and slammed down the phone, only to call back an hour later and agree. Not that it mattered. Nikki slipped into the downstairs apartment the moment it was empty and did some work on the walls, ceiling, and floors with her spray paints. Then, for good measure, she did the public hallway, stairs, and front door. Nobody was going to want to rent that apartment.
The door of our second-floor apartment wasn’t overlooked, either. It said, in a plain white that showed up beautifully on top of the oak wood: FAT COW + DICKLESS LITTLE BOY. She had started out writing too big and had to downsize her letters to include the part about me.
In the middle of this war zone, however, I was counting my blessings.
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