Chapter 10
Back at the post office, Sylvie does her best to ignore the distinct combination of nausea and wooziness that means she needs
to eat, and soon. Standing on the hard surface of the tiled floor, she ponders what will happen if she pushes herself too
hard and passes out right there, in the midst of all that is already taking place. She moves over to the counter, balances
her weight against it, and silently reprimands herself for not eating before she left the house. She hadn’t been hungry when
she made lunch for Robert, figuring she’d eat later. Only now it is later and that isn’t an option.
She is always pushing herself, denying her age, as if ignoring it will change it. The question comes to mind again: How did
she get to be so old? Time went by, that’s how. And no matter how much she protests, her age won’t change. That is a fact,
like gravity. It is, she reminds herself, better than the alternative.
She looks down at her feet, anchored to the floor by an invisible force. But what is keeping her there is not invisible. She
glares over at Tommy, though he doesn’t see it, what with his pacing and muttering. She wonders what, if anything, she can
do to make things better. She wishes for Robert, or at least the Robert of the past, the steady, calm presence of him that
once made her feel safe. He took care of her. He always had.
She’d grown complacent over the years, lulled into thinking that the way it was was the way it always would be.
That she would be herself and Robert would be Robert.
Until one day he didn’t know which house was theirs.
Granted, they lived in a planned retirement community where all the homes looked similar, all variations on a theme.
It was an easy mistake to make. That’s what she’d told herself at first.
Tommy turns from the windows and looks at all of them. He appears as lost as Robert had that day, blinking at the four women
in the room as if he does not know who they are or why they are there with him. He’s gotten himself into a mess, Sylvie thinks.
A mess he doesn’t know how to get himself out of. If only he hadn’t chased that woman out with a gun. If only he hadn’t fired
at them when they tried to run away.
He should’ve let them go and then fled himself. There was a moment when all of this could’ve been resolved with little fuss.
But they have sailed past that moment. As their eyes make contact, she suspects this is all occurring to him now and the reality
is amping up his desperation. A desperate man is a dangerous one. Somehow she will need to make him believe there is still
hope.
In her mind she sees the verse from Jeremiah they have mounted over their doorway at home. It’s been in every home they’ve
ever lived in, hand-painted by a dear aunt and gifted to them on their wedding day. It is a verse people often like to quote,
the one about hope and a future. But she will need to give Tommy hope for a future. The reality is, if this goes much further or, God forbid, goes badly, his future won’t be looking so hopeful. But
she can’t let him start believing that or it will only make the situation more difficult.
Tommy gestures at Sylvie, at all of them, twirling his finger in a circular motion.
“Have a seat,” he says, but none of them move.
Nadine, Blythe, Morrow, and Sylvie just stand in place, blinking at him like they don’t understand the words that have come out of his mouth.
Mostly because what he said doesn’t make sense.
There is nowhere to sit except for on the hard floor that hundreds of dirty shoes have tramped across, tracking who knows what all kinds of germs in their wake. No, thank you, Sylvie thinks.
Exasperated at not being obeyed, Tommy uses the gun like a pointer again, jabbing it in each of their directions, then jabbing
it at the floor. Sylvie thinks about him jabbing the gun at the papers he wanted Nadine to tear up. Based on what she’s seen
so far, she can’t blame Nadine for filing those papers, for being so hesitant to tear them up even with a gun pointed at her.
Sylvie wants to blame Nadine for this mess, but she cannot. In all honesty, she probably would’ve done the same and stood
her ground. Nadine couldn’t possibly have known that it would lead to this. Even Sylvie hadn’t truly appreciated what was
happening until it was too late.
For now it’s best to keep him calm. Appease him. And someone has to go first. Age before beauty, Sylvie thinks as she steps away from the counter and motions to the others to follow her over to the largest area of floor
space in the small room. “Let’s all have a seat,” she says. The other three pick up their things and slowly move with her.
Morrow, Blythe, and Nadine slide down into sitting positions on the floor seemingly without thinking about it even as it strikes
Sylvie that she cannot do the same. She can’t remember the last time she’s sat down on a floor. There was a time, in her fifties,
when she faithfully got herself down on the floor and then got herself back up again every day just because some guest on
a TV talk show said that women her age should do so.
Somewhere along the way she’d abandoned the practice, which she both regrets and wonders how much it would’ve helped as she stares down at the white specks dotting the tile beneath her feet.
She tries to picture lowering herself—thinking of the balance, dexterity, and control such a feat would require.
Even if she got herself down there, there is no way she could get herself back up.
She feels as helpless as a child. Worse than a child. A child could throw herself to the floor and pop right back up again.
Sylvie cannot. For a moment she is mad at this man who is forcing her to feel this way. But even as angry tears fill her eyes,
she reminds herself that anger is not the way out of here. With all the gentleness she can muster, she says to the room, “I’m
an old lady.” She gives a little laugh as if she has said something funny. “Sitting on the floor is difficult for me.” Impossible, she thinks.
She stands, immobile, as they all stare at her, uncertain what to do. She is a problem, but she does not mean to be. This
is one part of aging she was not prepared for: the humiliation. The degradation. She was never incapable in her younger years.
She never allowed it.
“Here, let me help you,” says Nadine, hopping up from the floor as if it’s nothing. She goes over to the counter and tugs
the stool she’d been sitting on as she worked out of its little nook, then drags it across the floor to where the other women
are seated. The steel legs of the stool scraping across the tile floor make a grating noise like fingernails on a chalkboard.
They all wince at the sound.
Nadine stops when she reaches Sylvie and extends her hand, which Sylvie, with gratitude, takes. With Nadine’s assistance,
she climbs up onto the stool. Nadine stoops down to tuck Sylvie’s purse and the envelope under the stool. When Nadine stands
up, Sylvie starts to thank her for the help, but Nadine’s attention is diverted to the vestibule area.
Sylvie watches Nadine’s mouth make a small, round O of surprise and turns to discover two women standing in the vestibule, eyeing Tommy’s hastily constructed barricade with confused expressions.
One of them is holding what looks like a hot dog.
One of them is getting out her phone. When Tommy walks forward and raises the gun at them through the window, one throws the hot dog to the ground and the other starts talking fast into her phone.
Sylvie feels a mixture of relief and jealousy as the two women turn and run, exhaling for them as the outer front door opens
and they both disappear into the bright light, wincing for herself as the door slams shut behind them. She looks over at Nadine,
who stands frozen in place, looking like a child who has been abandoned.
Nadine watches Stacy and Martha go but wants to scream at them to come back. Not that she blames them for running away. Not
when Tommy just aimed his gun at them. This situation is getting further and further out of hand. Nadine feels helpless to
stop it, yet responsible for her part in it. If only she’d torn up those stupid papers when she had the chance. “This is all your fault, Nadine,” he’d said. Now she says it to herself.
Nadine looks at Sylvie, perched uncomfortably on the stool, looking sad and worried. She thinks of her own grandma, how she’d
want to kill anyone who put her in this position. She gives Sylvie a small smile, trying to communicate that things will be
okay, even though she doesn’t know if they will or not.
She doesn’t think Tommy would actually shoot someone—that bullet he fired off in the back went high on purpose. An experienced
hunter, Tommy knows how to shoot a gun too well to miss that badly. But she doubts the cops will take any of that into account,
especially seeing as how Tommy has now pulled a gun on two of her coworkers. She looks out at the vestibule. The hot dog is
lying there, freed from its bun. Sure enough, there’s yellow mustard slathered across it. Nadine rolls her eyes and looks
away. The sight makes her nauseous.
Tommy strides back to the counter, to the envelope they’d fought over, still where they left it. He stares at it for a long moment as the four women watch him warily, then looks back at Nadine. “Do you want to tear it up, or me?” he asks.
Nadine sighs. Not this again. “It doesn’t matter if I tear it up, Tommy. All this”—she waves her hand at the room, at the
seated women—“sort of overrules that.”
Tommy grimaces, his brows knit together and his eyes squinty. “All this”—now it’s his turn to gesture to the room, the seated
women—“is because of that. If you’d just torn it up like I asked, given us a chance like I asked . . .”
Nadine cocks her head at him. “Yes,” she says, deadpan. “You’ve made giving you another chance look like such a good option.” She rolls her eyes as punctuation.
In response Tommy seizes the envelope and, with a dramatic flourish, holds it aloft like Moses with the Ten Commandments.
If he wasn’t currently clutching a gun in his free hand, they all would probably crack up laughing. Instead, they all watch,
frozen, as he puts the gun down where the envelope used to be and uses both hands to tear the envelope into pieces.
Well, they don’t all watch. Morrow registers both the gun discarded on the counter and Tommy’s full hands and carpe diems her way to the barricade,
pushing with all her might to remove the smallest obstacle, a display of tourism pamphlets, freebies meant to entice visitors
to come to the local attractions. The pamphlets about the local planetarium fall to the ground and fan out as Morrow grunts
with the effort even as she thinks of the one time she took Maya to that planetarium. There’d been a laser show featuring
Taylor Swift music. She’d thought Maya would love it, but she fell asleep halfway through and didn’t want to stop for ice
cream afterward.
Tommy sees what’s happening, drops the bits of envelope, grabs the gun, and goes after Morrow.
Except he isn’t prepared for a mother who’s already had a very bad day.
Morrow turns on him with claws bared. She uses her nails, manicured in a lovely shade of rosy pink, to fend him off, swiping at him in an attempt to keep him at bay as she continues to try to remove the obstacles he put there, straining for her freedom.
She uses her hands and feet and elbows. She puts up one hell of a fight.
Though the other three women don’t join in, they do live vicariously through Morrow, appreciating every time one of her appendages
makes contact with one of his. Later they will wonder why they never moved to help. If they’d all worked together, they will
think, they might have gotten free. But they were too afraid to move, too swept up by the danger flowing through the room,
cowed by the threat of Tommy’s weapon.
Though it seems much longer, the fight is over in minutes. Tommy gains the upper hand and pulls Morrow away from the doorway,
pushing her back to her spot among the others. She slumps down, not making eye contact, the picture of defeat. Blythe thinks
of saying something to her, something about how brave she’d just been, how she’d done what they’d all wanted to do but had
been too afraid. She wants to tell Morrow she is a hero. But Blythe says nothing. She returns to picking the nail polish off
her own nails, quietly marveling over how well Morrow’s manicure held up in the fight.