Vera
The first time it happened, Ana was just out of college. The call came late.
“What’s wrong?” I answered.
“Something happened,” she said. Her voice sounded so strange I remember, flat, cold. I think she was in shock. “Something
bad.”
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“I’m coming.”
Because that’s the thing with us. It doesn’t matter how mad she makes me, or how much we fight. We’re bound—not just by blood.
But by the knowledge that there’s no one else in the world who would have our backs in the same way. I’d lay my life down
for my kids, but I wouldn’t want or expect them to do the same for me. Brad? Well, adult love, especially one like ours, is
conditional, isn’t it? With Ana and me, it’s not even a question. She calls, I come. I call, she comes. We do what it takes,
no matter what. That’s how it was with Sadie and Agnes.
When I got to my sister’s place, Ana was sitting at the kitchen table in her little rental house just outside of town.
There was a beat-up old Mustang with a torn ragtop in her driveway that I didn’t recognize.
As I came in through the garage, Ana was holding an ice pack to her face.
When she took it away, I saw the black rose of a giant shiner blooming across her cheekbone and temple, her eye swollen shut.
“What the fuck?”
“You should see the other guy,” she said, nodding in the direction of the living room.
Indeed.
He was splayed across the floor, having fallen apparently on top of the cheap IKEA coffee table and flattening it beneath
himself. The shards of a shattered crystal vase were scattered about like stars on the dark area rug. There was a deep gash
on his head. Something about the scene reminded me of our childhood, Sadie and Mac always going at it. These big fights where
things got broken, and then they were weeping in each other’s arms.
I’m not sure how long I stood there in a terrible storm of shock and bad memories.
“Is he dead?” I asked from the doorway, finally finding words.
“I don’t know,” she said wearily, as if the question annoyed her.
This was before I met Brad, before the kids. Agnes had recently passed. It was really just the two of us then. I imagined
her being hauled away like our mother, leaving me alone in this ugly world.
I approached him carefully, my heart thumping, knelt down, reached to a wrist for his pulse and found him alive. At my touch,
he issued a groan and I moved away from him quickly. He was too big to move; Ana has always been partial to a big muscle-bound
guy, whereas I prefer them lithe, flexible—yogis and runners, not body builders and WWF beefcakes.
“Who is he?”
“Just some guy I met on HookUp.”
“HookUp?”
“You know, the app for people who just want to get together for—like a night or whatever.”
“You’re kidding.”
She shrugged. “Don’t be a judgy bitch, Vera.”
“What happened?”
“He came over. He got rough—like too rough. I told him to stop. He lost it, hit me. So, I took care of him.”
The man on the floor issued a low groan. A word. Help.
“Is that Mom’s crystal vase?”
“Was. Yes,” she said, sounding momentarily regretful. “I’d like to think she would be happy it served a function beyond holding
flowers.”
“So, what do we do with him?” I asked.
She looked at me with dismay. “For fuck’s sake, Vera, that’s why I called you.”
It was a mistake in retrospect, but I couldn’t think of anything to do but call Lisander. To her credit, she was there within
an hour. She brought a couple of her young acolytes with her, Bree and Camille—who have both since moved up the ranks of The
Cove.
They arrived with purpose at the front door, each of the younger women carrying a duffel bag.
“First, we take care of Ana’s injuries,” said Lisander.
She was tender with my sister, asking her what happened, listening attentively. She produced an arnica salve, which she rubbed
liberally on Ana’s bruise and probably fractured ribs—then put her to bed with an ice pack.
“Now we take out the trash,” she said, as she closed Ana’s door.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“We just need him to wake up somewhere else, not be sure how he got there, and be humiliated enough that he never speaks of
it. Why in the world did she invite some stranger to her house?”
“How should I know?”
Impulsivity. Poor judgment. A lack of foresight. I wish I could say I was surprised. But that was Ana. Act first, think later.
Camille, Bree, Lisander, and I managed together to get the unconscious man in the back hatch of her vehicle, grateful for
the isolated property surrounded by trees. We then continued on to a truck stop, Lisander driving the stranger’s junky old
Mustang, the three of us following in her ancient minivan. The truck stop was a place known locally for illicit hookups and
illegal activities. As we arrived several dark, parked cars idled. Windows tinted, vehicles rocking subtly.
Lisander, a registered nurse at the local hospital, had injected Ana’s friend with a syringe of Midazolam, a short-acting
benzodiazepine utilized in sedation in critical care, a powerful amnesiac.
“Won’t it show up in his blood?” I asked.
Camille, who was the approximate build of a twelve-year-old boy but still somehow impossibly strong, shook her head. Her bright
green eyes and dark skin a gorgeous contrast.
“No.”
She’d done most of the lifting as we hauled the unconscious man from Lisander’s hatch to the back seat of his own vehicle.
“Well, only if he goes to the cops, and they take his blood,” answered Bree, a watchful blonde with short-cropped hair and sleeves of tattoos who had driven the
van. “Which he won’t.”
“And no one who saw us here will ever tell,” said Lisander, looking around at the darkened vehicles. “Because everyone here
is up to no good.”
It was slightly genius.
“He’ll wake up, no idea how he got here,” said Camille, as if this was something they’d done before. “Hopefully he’ll be embarrassed
enough to go home, sleep it off, and never speak of it again.”
“What if he goes after Ana?” I asked.
“She’ll stay with you for a while,” said Lisander, easily. “We’ll watch her house. If he comes back, we’ll manage him more
completely.”
Lisander reminded me so much of Agnes with her cool certainty that bad people, men especially, were problems to be managed in a variety of different ways from the subtle to the total.
Once a man hits you or harms you and you let him get away with it—Agnes warned us, as I know she warned Sadie, who never listened—he’ll hit you again and again until he kills you. A certain type will come after you when you try to free yourself. That type
will need to be put down like a dog who can’t stop biting.
“But we’ll give him the chance to walk away and keep his mouth shut,” said Lisander.
We got into the van, and Lisander started the drive back to Ana’s house.
“Thank you,” I said when we arrived.
“Ana,” said Lisander, glancing at me. “She’s a loose cannon. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to clean up one of her messes.”
“I know,” I said. “But this was clearly self-defense.”
Lisander nodded, tugging on the long gray braid of her hair with heavily ringed fingers. On the back of her hand the tattoo
of a monarch butterfly, her wrists covered with inked vines and flowers, line drawings of herb gardens, bees, birds. “I agree—and
that’s why we’re here at all. But you know when we invite danger into our lives, we often pay a high price.”
“So, you’re saying she asked for it?”
She put a comforting hand on my leg.
“Of course not. I’m only saying that there are good men in this world, and there are dangerous ones. When we find ourselves
drawn to darkness over and over, we have to question that impulse. We have to learn and grow from our mistakes, act to protect
ourselves—and The Cove. Impulsive actions threaten us all.”
She sounded just like Agnes, which was as comforting as it was annoying.
I understood what she was saying, and truthfully it was nothing I hadn’t said to Ana a thousand times. Don’t pick Mac over and over. But maybe when we’re young, we learn what love looks like from our parents. And in our case our parents’ brand of love was
violence.
Victor has left, and I’m alone in the house, mind reeling from the things I’ve learned at the police station.
As I wrestle the vacuum from the closet to clean floors that don’t need cleaning, I think about the crime scene photo of Paul,
the detective’s questions of Ana. The mention of Kevin Harding, another man who ran afoul of Ana. I feel my grip on things
slipping.
Then it’s on to surfaces that don’t offer even the finest layer of dust, as I wonder how I’m going to get my sister out of
this recent mess.
Finally, in the master closet, I go through all the pockets of Brad’s suit jackets. Not looking for anything in particular.
I like to check receipts against what he’s said he’s been doing. Once I found a matinee ticket stub for a noon movie. He never
mentioned it to me; I never asked. It’s not really my business. I just like knowing what he’s up to. His pockets are empty
except for a receipt from the weekend at the golf club, consistent with his known activities.
My phone pings with a text from Brad, as if he knows I’m rifling around his things.
We lost another client today. Vision, the data center just outside of town.
Shoot. That’s a big fish. A flush of anger comes up. Anything that threatens our livelihood, threatens our family.
Okay, I type back. We’ll get through this. There have been challenging times before.
We might have to let people go.
Brad tends to get very worst-case scenario.
Let’s not jump the gun.
Anxiety reaches a crescendo as I fluff the bed pillows.
Another ping. This one from Ana.
It’s the Wolf Moon tonight. Did you forget?
I look outside to the dim afternoon already hinting at dusk. I didn’t forget as much I chose to ignore. It’s in these moments
when I feel out of my depth that I most miss Agnes.