One of my bare feet is illuminated by light from the window; the other foot remains in shadow. Tiny blobs of bacon grease speckle the floor between them. A haze of smoke winds its way in a visible layer above my head. Elle’s eyes are bright with curiosity. Her hand, holding the phone, looks strong and capable, and the smooth curve of her nails is the same as her father’s.
I watch my own hand reach out for the phone. The fingers are longer than Elle’s, more tapered, the nails coated in glittery black. There’s a burn from a grease splash right next to the first knuckle. It’s red around the edges, forming a perfect fluid-filled blister at the center. All those little body cells, rushing around to do damage control, histamine alarms blaring, white blood cells rushing in.
Elle shoves the phone into my hand, reminding me that I’m supposed to do something besides stand here. The phone feels heavier than it looks, and my voice, when I say hello, floats upward to join the smoke above my head, a cartoon bubble of a question that doesn’t want an answer.
I’m going to get an answer though, whether I want it or not. A long, detailed, scorching one, because this is Mrs. Carlton calling. Mrs. Stay-Off-My-Lawn Carlton. Mrs. I’m-Telling-Your-Mother Carlton. Mrs. Shouldn’t-You-Be-Doing-Homework and Why-Is-That-Boy-Kissing-You Carlton.
“Maisey?” I hardly recognize her voice. It’s gone soft and quavery. She sounds like she’s eighty. But then, she was already old when I was sixteen. She might be eighty now. She might be pushing a hundred.
“How did you get my number?”
“It was on your mother’s fridge. I’m calling because I don’t think your father should be alone just now.”
“Why not?” That’s the first question. It’s followed by the crushing and more obvious one, the question that transforms my lungs from spongy air reservoirs into solid, impermeable plastic, incapable of retaining oxygen. “Where’s Mom?” That’s the second question, the one I don’t want to hear the answer to.
“The ambulance just left. The police are still here, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to arrest him. Heaven knows I can’t stay with him. I have things to do at my own house, and besides, I’m not sure I’d feel safe. You know?”
I don’t know. I don’t know anything. None of this conversation makes sense.
I can hear voices in the background. Male. Authoritative. Voices with answers.
“The police are there?”
“They came with the ambulance. I think they might call Adult Protective Services if they don’t arrest him, but you should probably—”
“Let me talk to the police.”
“You want to talk to the police?” She sounds scandalized, like I’ve asked to talk to somebody at ISIS headquarters.
There’s a sound of heavy breathing and shuffling feet, and another voice comes on the phone.
“Maisey?”
“Dad? What on earth is going on over there?”
“The police are here.”
“I heard that. Why? Why are the police there? What happened to Mom?”
“Your mother—” Silence. More heavy breathing. “They took her in the ambulance. She didn’t want to go, Maisey. And I can’t find the—”
“This is Officer Mendez. Is this the daughter?”
A new voice. Male. Confident. The slightest hint of a Latino accent. The question mark is only for the purposes of confirming my identity, and I know that I am now talking to the police.
The daughter.
As in, the next of kin. The now-responsible party for a disaster so high on the clusterfuck scale there is no number sufficient to mark it.
“What’s going on? What happened to my mother?”
“She’s alive,” he says, but his tone doesn’t offer much hope that she’s going to stay that way. “The neighbor—Edna Carlton—called, after your father refused to let her speak with your mother. She states that she got worried when she didn’t see anybody enter or leave the house for the last three days. She states that your father appeared edgy and was unshaven and confused, which is not normal for him. There was dried blood on his shirt—”
“That’s ridiculous. Edna Carlton is a busybody. Are you sure she’s not embellishing facts?”
My father has never missed a shower or a shave in his entire life, or at least not for as long as I’ve known him. Partly because he’s neat and particular and partly because my mother would never permit it.
My mother. Rushed off in an ambulance.
Mendez and I suck in simultaneous deep breaths.
“Your father presents as described. He neglected to lock the door. Mrs. Carlton, worried about your mother, entered the home when he did not respond to her knocks. She found your mother in bed, unconscious. She then called 911. Your mother is severely dehydrated. She has suffered a blow to the back of the head. There is blood on the kitchen floor.”
I put my free hand on the counter behind me for balance.
“Mom?” Elle asks. “What’s wrong?”
I turn my back to the fear on her face, leaning my forehead against the kitchen cupboards, and make one last Hail Mary for denial. “She’s fine, right? Nothing a little IV fluid won’t fix?”
“Is there somebody with you, Maisey? Maybe you should sit down.”
I hate this voice, with its accented vowels and competent professional sympathy. I don’t want to hear anything he has to tell me, no matter what words he uses to say it.
“I’m not alone. I don’t need to sit.”
He clears his throat, and I press my forehead harder against the cabinet, feeling the edge press a line into my skin, focusing on the pain. Elle comes up behind me and takes my hand, the trembling that runs through my muscles transferring to hers, and I visualize this Officer Mendez person frozen into a block of carbonite, like Han Solo in Star Wars. But I am not Darth Vader or Jabba the Hutt or even an incompetent young Padawan. I lack even a glimmer of power, and Mendez keeps talking.
“She’s in a coma,” he tells me. “Most likely from the blow to the back of her head. Your father is looking at domestic violence charges, along with criminal negligence and possibly others.”
My breathing shifts from autopilot to a difficult obligation.
“Mom?” Elle asks, tugging at me. She sounds younger, no longer her bossy self. I squeeze her hand, a reminder that I haven’t suddenly shifted into some alternate reality.
“Listen, Officer. My father does a capture-and-release program for spiders and stinkbugs and mice that get lost in the cupboard. He would never hurt her. Maybe she fell. Or had a stroke or something.”
“That will be for the judge—”
“You said there was blood in the kitchen. Maybe she slipped. Hit her head on the counter. Did you ask him?”
“We asked. That’s what he said, that she fell. He reported that after she fell, he did not call 911 because, I quote, ‘She wanted to die.’ He states that he then dragged her into the bedroom and up onto the bed.”
“If that’s what he said, that’s what happened.”
But none of this can be right. Elle lets go of my hand, and I feel myself on the edge of a long free fall.
“Those are the charges we’re looking at,” Mendez says. “Domestic violence. Criminal negligence. He didn’t call for an ambulance. Three days, if your neighbor is right.”
“Edna Carlton is old, in case you didn’t notice. Maybe she’s just confused—”
“The blood in the kitchen is dry, as is the blood on your father’s shirt. There are flies. Nobody has picked up the paper from the porch for three days.”
Elle shoves a chair into the back of my knees. I collapse into it.
“To your knowledge, has he ever hit her?”
“No. God, no. I told you—”
“What about you, ma’am. Has he ever hit you?”
The absurdity of my father hitting anybody, ever, sends my mind on a scavenger hunt through my childhood, seeking out instances. I meet my mother’s hand repeatedly—a smack on the butt, a tap on the cheek—but my father’s hands are always gentle.
“Maisey?” The cop yanks me back to this moment.
“No,” I say. “Never.”
“Is your father . . . unbalanced . . . in any way?”
“My father is the kindest, most gentle soul on the face of the planet, and I can’t believe you are even—”
“What about dementia?”
“What?”
“Dementia. Alzheimer’s. Has he been having difficulty with memory? Sometimes there are mood swings, dramatic changes in personality—”