The Rules of Survival (23 page)

Authors: Nancy Werlin

BOOK: The Rules of Survival

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LIKE ME

I would have done it, Emmy. I had drawn back my foot to kick Nikki in the head with the full force of all of the rage and hate inside me, when a truck came roaring up to the gate again. But this time it was not Bob. This time it was a truck I recognized.

I took two steps back, away from my mother.

Nikki immediately levered herself up onto her elbows. She gave a little hiss. I thought I heard her mutter, “I knew it.” She got to her feet.

Murdoch pulled up. He got out of his truck and his eyes found mine. “Sorry,” he said. “I fell asleep.”

I didn’t know if he’d seen me looming over Nikki. I didn’t know if he realized what I had been about to do. In that moment, I hated him for coming. For stopping me.

He was in front of me. We formed a little circle: Murdoch, Nikki, and me, with you on the ground. Then Murdoch knelt and scooped you up. His nostrils flared at your smell. “Whew.”

You were unconscious, but I watched you turn in your sleep and nestle comfortably, trustingly, into Murdoch’s arms.

What if it had been two minutes later? What if Murdoch had come to find me kicking Nikki to death? What if it had been
five
minutes later, and Nikki was already dead?

Murdoch’s back was to Nikki. He had not looked directly at her. She said his name. He still didn’t look. She said it again, more sharply. Still, she was ignored.

“Come on, Matt,” he said to me. “Let’s go.”

“Murdoch!” Nikki repeated. She was shouting now. “Look at me! You look at me!” She was entirely focused on him. It seemed to me that she, too, didn’t understand what I had almost done.

Murdoch didn’t answer. Carrying you, he began walking away.

I couldn’t follow. Not yet. I watched Nikki. How could she not have realized that her son had been about to kick her head in?

But she wasn’t even aware of me. She was working her face oddly, staring after Murdoch. “Don’t you walk away from me!” she shouted at his back. “You have to look at me! You have to see what you’ve done to me! All of this is your fault! Yours! My life is a mess now, and it’s all because of you.”

Murdoch stopped walking and turned, but it was only to quirk an eyebrow back at me. “Matt?”

“Murdoch!” Nikki shouted again. “Just answer one question. That’s all I want. This one question answered.”

I found myself at Murdoch’s side. I got into the truck’s passenger seat and Murdoch handed you to me. I settled you into my lap just as Nikki came up next to Murdoch and grabbed at his arm, tugging, pulling. He pushed her away and closed the door between her and us. “Lock it, Matthew,” he said, and, numbly, I did.

I watched as our mother came in close to Murdoch again and tried to twine her arms around his neck. His face was impassive, but he grabbed her forearms and tried to move her away from him.

She leaned in and screamed right into his face: “Why’d you take my kids from me, Murdoch? Why? Why? Why?”

Murdoch’s hands tightened around Nikki’s forearms. He yanked her away. She staggered back a few steps, glaring.

He had already turned away from her. But I saw his face, and the way he stood in his body in that moment, and sudden knowledge about him came through to me. It was as if he was a piece of code that had been encrypted until this moment, but now I could read him clearly for the very first time.

And I knew he had been like me. That he had once been a child just like me.

Then Murdoch was standing in front of Nikki.

“If I were you, Nikki, I’d leave this state and never come back. This time you won’t get out of jail quickly. This time it’ll be years.”

And then he was back, climbing into the truck beside you and me, closing and locking the door. And not a moment too soon, because Nikki ran to us again. She held on to the handle of Murdoch’s door, trying in vain to open it, pounding on the window with her other hand. Her face was as contorted as I’d ever seen it. She had eyes only for Murdoch. It was as if you and I were not there.

“You’ll be sorry!” she screamed. “You’ll be sorry you did this to me.”

Murdoch shrugged. He started the car and put it in reverse. And at the last possible second—I hardly believed it—Nikki let go and stepped away. And we drove off.

I didn’t look back, but I felt her eyes on us all the way out the gate.

MY PROMISE

Two years ago now, Emmy. We have not seen her since.

So. Is that all? Is that it? I don’t know. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Yesterday, I turned eighteen. I have plans for my future, and for the first time since you were born, they do not include you. This fall, I am leaving you and Aunt Bobbie and the home we’ve made together in Scituate these last years. I am going to college more than halfway across the country.

I am leaving Callie behind, too, of course. In some ways, this feels less important than leaving you, because Callie has made her home with Ben these past years. But in others, it’s huge, because she is still Callie, still my partner. We spent all those years knowing, at a glance, what the other was thinking or feeling. That hasn’t changed.

At first I hoped that Callie would follow me to Austin, to do her premed major there. But she says probably not. “I’ll think about it. But, well . . .”

I understand what she doesn’t dare say, not yet, anyway. Callie is having those big dreams again. Ben told me that her chemistry and biology teachers think she should apply to this special program that would get her into medical school after only three years of undergraduate work. If she wants.

Which she does.

Once, about a year ago, she said to me, “We were lucky, Matthew. So lucky that I sometimes lie awake at night thinking about it. And thinking about other kids, too. All the other kids out there. Somewhere.”

“I know,” I said. We didn’t need to say more. We never did.

Callie’s teachers, no matter how brilliant they think she is, never will know why she is going to be such a good doctor, such a rare doctor. But I know, and you do, too, Emmy. Callie has taken something from our family that I can’t even put into words. Something I never imagined, back when my whole world was about taking care of her. About making sure she survived.

I am proud of Callie, Emmy. So proud—if a little sad—that she doesn’t need me anymore.

But you. By leaving you, I am saying that you don’t need me anymore, either. That on a day-to-day basis, Aunt Bobbie is enough—with Murdoch and Ben and Callie nearby, of course. That there will be no other emergency, or crisis, or peril that requires me to save you.

The thing is, despite the calm of these last two years, I don’t believe it. I wonder if it would have been better if Murdoch had not come that night. He came too late to keep me from that moment of transformation when I understood I could and would kill Nikki. And he came before I could ensure your safety forever by doing what I would have done.

So now, I must behave like a normal eighteen-year-old, as if all I need to think about is myself and what I want. It’s attractive. Sometimes when I’m alone, I open my letter from the University of Texas, Austin, and I read about my scholarship, and about how much they hope I will accept it, and how promising a young man they think I am. I know they say similar things to everybody. I read it anyway. I eat it up.

I want to go to Austin, and I will. But I do it knowing that our mother will turn up again one day. Next month, next year, five years from now, or when you are grown up. She will come. For you.

Murdoch says no, she won’t. But I know her better than he does.

And even if he turns out to be right, even if she doesn’t return, I also know that our mother is not the only peril in the world. Not the only person who will hurt those she says she loves, or put them carelessly in the way of danger.

So, my little sister. This is what I want to tell you. Even as I move into adulthood and make choices that take me physically far from you—and even as, in time, you do the same in your own life—I will stay alert. My cell phone will always be on, and I will be only a phone call (or an email, or an instant message) away. I don’t just mean while I am in college, Emmy. I mean forever. And I will do what has to be done. I know now that I can.

This, I think, is why I’ve been so driven to write the whole story for you. Not really so that you’ll remember our mother, and not be fooled by her when she shows up. In my heart, I don’t think you have forgotten her, or would be fooled by her. But I write so that you’ll remember
me
. And so that you will have this in writing, and understand exactly why I say it to you:

As long as I live, when you need help, you will never need to beg anyone to notice. I won’t just hang around thinking I ought to do something to help.

I will act.

P. S.

I put away this letter—and I guess it’s still a letter, even though it’s very long—a few months ago. I thought I’d let it sit awhile. Then I’d go over it and see if there was anything I wanted to change.

But now I am adding to it, finishing it, without having reread what I wrote before. I will never reread it. I know that now. This letter, this story, done or not, over or not, is done and over. It is what it is. With this last entry, I close the book.

But before I do, I have just a little more to say. One new discovery that I’m still puzzling over, trying to figure out what it means. And something else, too, smaller, that I concealed from you and that has been eating at me.

The smaller, easier thing first. The little lie that’s been eating at me.

Emmy, I told you that we had not seen Nikki since the night you and I left her behind us at the port. Strictly speaking, that’s true. But it implies that we haven’t heard from her, either, and that is a lie. There are letters, regular letters, handwritten and sent through the U.S. mail, forwarded from our old address. There’s at least one a month, and occasionally there will be a rush of them, one or even two a day for seven, eight, nine days in a row. I get them, and Callie gets them, and some are addressed to you, though Aunt Bobbie and I make sure you never see them. Ben, Aunt Bobbie, and Murdoch get them, too.

Some of the letters are ordinary, crazy in their ordinariness, full of motherly questions about school and advice to dress warmly in the winter and to eat vegetables. But some of the letters, most of them, are rants. Certain themes return again and again.

I love you.

I miss you.

I hate you.

It’s Murdoch’s fault.

It’s Matthew’s fault.
(By the way, she never blames Callie or you, or Ben or Bobbie.)

I’m going to kill you.

I’m going to kill myself.

You’ll be sorry.

None of the letters contain information about Nikki and her life, though they are usually postmarked from some tourist city, like Las Vegas, Orlando, or Atlantic City, and written on hotel stationery: Comfort Inn, Holiday Inn Express, the occasional Hilton or Marriott. We can only guess where she lives, how she lives.

At first, I found the letters enraging, and also terrifying. I will not pretend that I am not still afraid of her. A letter would arrive, and I’d feel as if Nikki herself were there. I could almost see her hands in motion. Her nails. Panic would push at me from inside, and I’d spend the next few days with an accelerated heart rate, looking over my shoulder. Where did she live, could she be tracked down, how could we—how could you—be kept safe? Should I get a gun? Thoughts like these would claw frantically and repetitively at my mind.

And then . . . I don’t know. A year passed, and then two. And lately, well, it’s not such a big deal anymore. A letter comes, and my throat closes up only for an instant, and honestly, Em, I’m almost bored. I don’t open them anymore. I look at the postmark and I put it away to give to Murdoch.

Is she still dangerous to us? Maybe. Anybody can be dangerous. But once she was all-powerful in our lives. She was the queen bee and we served her. Now she’s dangerous like a mosquito. A mosquito might bite you. It might carry malaria. But most of the time, a mosquito just whines and buzzes. And even if it bites you, even if it draws blood, well, so what?

Let her write her letters. Let her live her life, wherever she is, whoever she’s with, whatever she’s doing. I can almost see her on a bar stool somewhere, trying to pick up the man on the next stool. She’s older now, she’s not finding it as easy as she used to.

You know what? I almost have it in me to feel sorry for her. Almost. And sometimes now, I think maybe it was good that Murdoch showed up when he did that night. Maybe it was good that I didn’t kill her.

The other day, I realized this, Emmy. And that was what made me think that there was no need, really, to conceal the letters from you. You, too, should understand that Nicole Marie O’Grady Walsh is only a mosquito in our lives.

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