The Rules of Survival (5 page)

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Authors: Nancy Werlin

BOOK: The Rules of Survival
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Our mother’s hair flew out behind her like a flag. She ran from one giant rock to another. She shouted for us to come join her, to show some spirit, to have some fun. Were we alive or were we dead?
Emmy, you screamed. I guess it was a delayed reaction to being seized. Simultaneously, Murdoch was up and yelling, “Nikki! Stop! These rocks aren’t safe for running around. This isn’t a beach—”
Nikki did stop. She turned and called back to Murdoch: “It’s not safe?” She sounded almost reasonable.
“No.” Murdoch’s brow smoothed out when she turned. “Some of the rocks are unstable down there. It’s just not a good place to run around.” He’d gotten up, but that was all. I knew he thought she’d stop and just come back. She wasn’t very far away yet.
Meanwhile, though, Callie and I had already started down toward you. Murdoch was right—the rocks were unstable; one of them shifted dangerously beneath my feet and I saw Callie slip on another. “Hey!” Murdoch called after us. “Matt, Callie! Didn’t you hear me? That’s not safe. Come back up here.” He began following us, moving quickly, competently.
Below, our mother laughed again. She put you down on your feet, Emmy, and then grabbed your hand and made you run with her, pulling you along by one arm. “Chase us!” she yelled. “Come on! Come on!”
She went from rock to rock, running parallel to the ocean, dragging you. Once you fell and got yanked to your feet, forced to run on.
“Come on! Losers—catch us!”
Do you remember any of this, Emmy?
Callie and I were running, too. It was what Nikki wanted. We had to pretend we were all playing her game; we had to get you back safe—I don’t really know why we ran after you, I just know we did. I was terrified; the rocks were slippery and some of them moved when you landed on them, and I was wearing old sneakers without good gripping soles. Callie was barefoot, like Nikki, which was maybe better for gripping, but the rocks were jagged. I could hear her panting beside me. I spared a moment to wonder what Murdoch was thinking, and where he was—
He came even with us and we felt his hands come down on our shoulders, stopping us in our tracks. “
Sit down
. Stay right here!”
He was enraged.
“You don’t understand,” Callie panted. “Emmy!”
His voice was clipped. “I’ll get Emmy.
Stay here
.”
He didn’t even dream we’d disobey. He was already past us, running full tilt across the rocks, gaining on our mother and you. “Nikki! Nikki, what do you think you’re doing?”
Callie and I exchanged one look and then we started running again. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but we knew our mother would do something. She was looking over her shoulder now as she ran. She watched Murdoch as he got closer and closer—
She changed direction, heading farther down the incline toward the ocean where waves smashed against the rocks. At first, Emmy, she dragged you behind her, but as Murdoch gained on you both, she grabbed you up again in her arms. And then, suddenly, you were on the very last rock, next to the edge. A big rock, with what looked to me like a long drop to the churning water below.
Our mother turned so her back was to the water. Murdoch was now only the width of a few large flat rocks away from her. He slowed down and reached out.
“Nikki, look. This isn’t a playground. I don’t think you understand—”
Two things happened. Beside me, Callie slipped and fell. She yelled, and in a glance I saw that her left foot was cut and bleeding. I reached down to help her up.
And our mother giggled. I looked up to see that she now had you suspended upside down over the churning water at the edge of the rocks.
She was holding you by your ankles.
Murdoch was an arm’s reach and a half away. Too far.
And Callie and I, we were too far away, too.
Gently, our mother began to swing you. Out over the water. Back over the rock. Water. Rock.
Water. Rock.
You weren’t screaming anymore. If you were making any sound at all, I couldn’t hear it. What I
could
hear was the drumming of my blood in my ears as my heart pumped.
Over our heads, the gulls cawed. And then even they were silent.
“Emmy loves this!” Nikki called. “I know what my kids like.”
“Nikki.” Murdoch’s voice carried up to Callie and me. I thought of that moment in the Cumberland Farms store, when Murdoch had faced that angry man.
I held my breath.
I don’t know how long we all stood there. Maybe just a minute. Maybe two. Murdoch’s eyes were locked on our mother’s.
Then: “Just joking,” our mother said, and pulled you back up into her arms. “Just having fun. I mean, you’re all so serious, so boring. We should have gone to that carnival in Lynn. That would have been more fun than this.”
Murdoch didn’t answer. He stepped closer, reaching out to take you. Our mother let Murdoch take you from her. She smiled at him.
You were safe in Murdoch’s arms. We watched your hands grip at him.
And we watched as our mother again took flight, feinting to the left and darting around Murdoch, running again across the rocks, but this time up, toward the top of the cliff, toward the car.
“You don’t know how to have any fun! Any of you!” she called back at us. “Losers!”
Murdoch didn’t break up with Nikki right after that. I guess he stayed confused about her several weeks longer. But that was when I knew he would. That the miracle had ended.
10
 
CALLIE’S DREAM
 
Maybe a week after that day in Gloucester, I found a piece of paper on which Callie had written out our names:
murdoch mcIlvane
Nicole O’Grady Walsh mcIlvane
matthew Eamon Walsh mcIlvane
Callie Suzanne Walsh mcIlvane
Emma mary Walsh mcIlvane
 
I stared at the paper, and I had to force back the acid pushing at my throat. My hands shook.
She had not just written out our names, though. Beneath that, she had written her own, again and again, in variations.
Callie S.W. mcIlvane
Callie S. mcIlvane
Callie Suzanne mcIlvane
Callie mcIlvane
C.S. mcIlvane
C. mcIlvane
miss mcIlvane
ms. mcIlvane
ms. Callie mcIlvane
 
And finally, after a space, and in letters that were shaky with their own courage:
Dr. Callie mcIlvane
 
It took my breath away, that final name. I had had no idea. I sat there for a while, remembering how Callie had helped me with science homework that year. My homework should have been over her head. And then, too, there was the logical, deductive way she’d located Murdoch.
Dr. Callie McIlvane.
That was when I understood that Callie dreamed bigger than I ever dared. I only wanted us to survive.
11
 
THE BREAKUP
 
Murdoch broke up with Nikki right after Labor Day weekend in September. He talked to me about it a week later, basically because I went to him and forced him to.
“Matt, try to understand. It wasn’t going to work out with her and me. She, well . . . she—” He stopped talking, groping for words that he thought wouldn’t be hurtful to me. “Things she liked to do weren’t . . . weren’t really for me.
“But I liked hanging out with you and your sisters. I like you guys. You know that. I was trying to figure out how to—how to not hurt you, too. Or at least as little as possible.”
I had shown up on his doorstep and demanded that he talk to me. My plan was to go all pathetic. Ask him why things couldn’t go back to the way they’d been. I was probably a little insane.
But in the end I couldn’t say those things to him. I knew we couldn’t turn back the clock. He knew I knew. Nobody couldn’t know, after what Nikki had done on Labor Day weekend.
The previous big holiday weekend, over the Fourth of July, we had been almost like a family, the five of us. As Labor Day approached, though, we had not seen Murdoch for many days, and our mother had been twitching with suppressed—something. Rage? Lust? Restlessness? On two nights during that week, she’d left us in the apartment alone and gone off, to see Murdoch, she said. She was gone all night. Later, Murdoch said she wasn’t with him those nights. But we thought she was. I thought, however sure they were to break up in the end, that it hadn’t happened yet. That we would have a little more time with Murdoch.
But Nikki had already fully reverted to someone we hadn’t seen since before Murdoch came into our lives. Her eyes were entirely dark, animal. She came home in the morning after one of those nights out, wrecked, dazed, tottering, red-eyed, limping slightly, and with a smile on her mouth. She threw herself into bed to sleep off the night while we crept around so as not to wake her.
I heard her leave two phone messages for Murdoch. She said the kind of things I’d heard her say many times, when she’d been with men who weren’t Murdoch. She called in those messages in front of us. She smiled at us while she said those things into the phone.
I could have tried to think it all out then, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I tiptoed around that week and hoped it would pass, hoped Murdoch would come over . . . and fixated on having a barbecue at his place like the one we’d had on the Fourth of July. I took you to the grocery store and we looked at hot dog buns and marshmallows and hamburger patties and talked about how delicious it had all been. There wasn’t any corn on the cob in the store. You insisted on looking in every aisle, even though I told you that if it wasn’t with the vegetables, it wasn’t there at all. Murdoch would get us sweet corn from that farm, I said. Like before, I said.
Murdoch had better not disappoint Emmy,
I thought.
It’s mean. It’s cruel. She expects us to have a barbecue! I told her we would do that. I told her we would have plans!
The tension and fear gathered and gathered inside me, and finally, at home, Friday afternoon, I called Murdoch myself on the prepaid cell phone he had given Callie and me to share because we ought to have it in case of emergency. But he didn’t pick up and I found I couldn’t leave a message.
He would call. I knew he would call. He would call. Call, call.
Call.
Call!
And that night, after nine o’clock, our mother came out of her room holding the phone in her hand. She was smiling, flushed, and she was all dressed up to go out—green sequined halter top, tight skirt, high heels. “Come on. We’re all going over to Murdoch’s.”
Callie and I exchanged glad glances. We couldn’t possibly have moved faster, even though we had to get you out of bed and dressed. We figured you could go back to sleep at Murdoch’s, you’d done it before. Everything was okay again—well, okay enough.
The light was on at Murdoch’s house, and his car was in front, so I didn’t realize that we weren’t expected until he came to the door. I saw his expression as he looked away from our mother and at Callie and you and me. There was surprise on his face, yes, but also something else.
Now, I rarely thought about our aunt Bobbie in those days. She was just the woman who lived downstairs. We said hello and good-bye and little more, since she and Nikki didn’t get along. But as I looked at Murdoch in the doorway of his home, I had a feeling of recognition. I’d seen that expression before—on Aunt Bobbie’s face, when she looked at us sometimes. I had not known what it was until I saw it on Murdoch’s face, too.
It was guilt.
The recognition hit me like a fist in the throat.
He didn’t say anything.
Our mother had snatched you up into her arms on the walk over, because you weren’t walking fast enough. Now she pushed you at Murdoch and his arms opened automatically to take you. For a second I hated him, even though I also saw, just by how he was holding you, Emmy, that he did care. Despite his intention to leave us. He looked at me and Callie, too. Just a blink. There was no expression on his face now, at all.
Nikki said, smoothly: “Look, Murdoch, I need help. I’ve had an emergency call from Rebekah. You haven’t met my friend Rebekah. Anyway, she’s been in a car accident and I have to go be with her at the hospital. You watch the kids. I don’t want to leave them home alone since I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”
He didn’t say anything. Later I asked him if he’d believed her, even for a second, and he’d shrugged. “I don’t know.” Then, seconds later, and so softly I had to strain to hear: “No.”
But that was later. Then, I didn’t know what Murdoch thought, only what I knew. And I didn’t need to look at Callie to know what she was thinking. There had been no telephone call from Rebekah—the phone hadn’t rung at our apartment all night. And as to our mother not wanting to leave us home alone, well, it had never bothered her before.
We said nothing. It was dangerous to contradict her.

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