Death
I opened my door, and Blue greeted me. He pranced in the hallway, his claws clicking on the wood. “Hello,” I called to the living room, adrenaline coursing through me, making me feel strong and out of control.
“In here,” the mayor answered. Blue followed me to the front room. James was tied to a chair. We’d bought it together at a flea market when I first moved to the city. It was covered in a deep-pink upholstery. I used it to throw my clothes on when I was too lazy to put them away. Now James, a dark bruise on his chin and a bright red hand print on his cheek, sat on it with his hands behind him and his ankles tied to the legs. A scarf I wore in my hair at the beach filled his mouth.
Blue picked up a bone that sat near James’s feet and brought it over to me. The bone was large, and bits of whatever animal it came from still clung to it. “I got that for him,” the mayor told me. “He likes me.” Blue wagged his tail and encouraged me to take the bone. I ignored him, keeping my eyes locked on the mayor’s face. He looked gray. His neck was bandaged, and I imagined the burn marks my weapon must have left on his neck.
“OK. You can let James go now. I’m here.”
The mayor laughed and raised a black pistol with a silencer screwed to the end. He aimed it at my face. “No one is going anywhere.” A cigar smoldered on my coffee table. He picked it up. “Not until I get what I came for.” The smoke caught the light pouring in through the windows. “Don’t you know you should never trust a politician?” He bit the cigar and smiled largely, showing me his teeth.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t think I am who you think I am. I’m not a threat to you. I’m just a dog-walker,” I tried to sound small. It wasn’t that hard.
“Don’t be silly Joy. You and I both know what you know. You know all about Joseph and Tate, those imbeciles.” His knuckles turned white gripping the cigar. He lowered it from his face.
“All I know about them is that they’re dead, and I don't want to be.”
“That’s a good attitude to have. Joseph and Tate could have learned something from you.” He looked at the tip of his cigar with narrowed eyes. “That Joseph. He had a real future if only he had known how to be faithful. You know, loyalty, faithfulness,” he said as he brought the cigar to his lips and took a long puff, “they are very hard qualities to find.”
Smoke seeped out of his mouth, rose above his head, and dissipated into the air. “Especially in men.” He stood for a moment, the pistol trained on my face. “That’s why my closest associates are women—my deputy mayor, my wife,” he smiled at me, “my secretary. These women would not abandon me for anything. They are loyal. Joseph Saperstein was not loyal; he was not faithful. He wasn’t even interesting,” Kurt said snickering at his joke. “I let him in on it. I didn’t need him. I could have sold the stuff myself. I don’t need an accountant to tell me how to hide things.” His eyes turned cold. “I was willing to make him a rich man. But he wanted to run off with some hooker half his age. And that wife of his, Jesus. She didn’t do anything to stop him,” he lowered his voice. “That’s OK, though. She’ll get what she deserves.” He looked out the window to Mrs. Saperstein’s dismal future and smiled.
Kurt Jessup turned back to me and continued his monologue. “You know, it’s OK to leave your wife. If he wanted to marry this—” he paused to find the right word, “this girl, that’s fine. He just should have done it without my gold.” His eyes glistened with a nervous excitement, and his cheeks flushed a deep red. “Nobody steals from Kurt Jessup. Nobody.” He looked like a man with a bad fever. “But you know all of this already, don’t you?”
“I know that Joseph and Charlene were having an affair. I don’t know anything about gold or stealing.” I tried to sound reasonable, like this was a normal conversation, like he wasn’t a gun-toting, cigar-smoking, gold-loving maniac.
“Charlene didn’t show you the gold?” He raised his eyebrows and watched my face intently. “I can tell that you’re lying, Joy. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s a liar.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He liked that, and a smile spread across his face. “That’s alright. Just don’t do it again.” He sat down on my couch and motioned for me to sit next to him. I moved around James’s bound body and sat. He put his cigar-holding hand around my shoulder and spoke softly, intimately into my ear. “Tate was a liar.” His breath was hot. “He lied to women to make them sleep with him. He lied to men to make them like him. And he lied to me to make me trust him. But I don’t trust anyone.” He squeezed my shoulder, being careful not to burn me with the hot ember of his cigar. “Do you want to know why I killed Tate?” he asked in a whisper. Goose bumps spread over my skin, and I was stunned into silence. The mayor stood up. “Don’t act so shocked, Joy!”
“I'm not shocked,” I said recovering myself.
“Don’t lie!” he yelled.
“I’m sorry.”
He took a step back and turned away from me. “I’m getting sick of your apologies,” he snarled with his back to me.
“OK.”
“Do you want to know why I killed him or not?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Honestly. Just answer it honestly.” He turned back to face me. “All I ever ask for is honesty.”
“Tell me.”
He smiled. “He got greedy.” Kurt did not continue. I sat on the couch with my knees together trying to figure out how to survive. The silence lasted a long time. Blue chewed on his bone, I stared at the floor, and the mayor watched me. “Don’t you want more details?”
“Yes.” I felt as if I were standing outside myself, watching. I noticed the way my eyes were fluttering around the room, like a scared little bunny rabbit caught in a trap, struggling against the metal talons holding me, fighting toward my death.
“He tried to take more than his share,” the mayor started. “There was plenty to go around. The H.M.S. Hussar is one of the greatest finds in history. Not only is she a piece of Revolutionary history, a veritable time capsule of the late 1700s, but she also carried millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of treasure." He liked watching my face when he said treasure. “It was right after law school when I started looking,” his eyes unfocused and appeared to drift back to that period in his life. “It wasn’t on purpose, you know. I wasn’t thinking about the Hussar when I found the map. I’d heard of the wreck, of course, every diver has, but the map was misfiled. I was looking for the blueprints of a recently demolished building in the Rare Books Room when I found it. Joy, you have no idea how I felt when I realized what it was, what I had.”
“Why all the secrecy? Why not tell the world what you’d found?”
Kurt glared at me. “Do you know the number of regulations involved in something like that? We are saddled with endless laws, rules, regulations, statutes, ordinances, mandates, and acts of Congress that it makes me wonder if this country is even a democracy at all or just a bureaucratic artifice.” He was spitting with every word. “Since the late 1800s, Congress has slowly strangled the ability of Americans enterprise. Why shouldn’t a person just be able to do what he dreams? Why must he plead with the government to let him make an attempt?” His face was red and his eyes wide with fury.
“But aren’t you a member of the government?”
“You are so naive, Joy. You think that I am a representative of the people, ey? That I am a law-abiding public servant, that I am your leader.” He moved close to me, and I concentrated on not squirming.
“I just was thinking that if you hate government so much, why be a part of it?”
“What else would I be? On the other side with the likes of you? Unable to do anything? A sheep. You think I'm a sheep?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Of course not.”
“I just don’t understand why you’re doing all this. I just don’t get it.”
“Don't you see? Being the mayor means nothing. I control nothing. Well,” he paused for a moment, “I control more than you control but not much. You think I don’t owe people for the power I have? It’s not like you get to the top and you’re free. There are a lot of people who I owe Joy.” He paused and then in a quieter voice he continued, “But the Hussar is mine, all mine. I can take her treasure and it will make me free.” He was looking at me with his eyes wide and wet. For a brief moment, I felt bad for him. Here was a man who believed treasure would make him free, when clearly nothing in the world could grant him liberty, not with a mind like that.
“I found her, Joy. And she is mine. I found the map. I found the first chest of gold. I almost missed it.” He laughed, looking at something far away. “It’s almost impossible to see down there, you know? The East River has some of the lowest visibility in the world, but I’ve got a nose for these things.” He tapped his gun to his nose, just in case I didn’t know where it was. “We found more than I ever could have hoped for—jewelry and coins, raw gems. Fantastic!”
“That’s a lot of treasure,” I said.
“Yes, it is.” The mayor became thoughtful. “But Tate didn’t think his half would be enough. It wasn’t even all to the surface, and he tried to steal it. Can you believe the man?”
“What a fool.”
His face lit up. “That is exactly what I thought when I realized what he was doing. Wasn’t there enough for everyone? Especially after I killed Joseph. Wasn’t half enough? Wasn’t it enough to warrant a little loyalty?”
“You would think.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” He was pacing, gesturing first with his gun and then with his cigar. “But Tate was not a loyal man. He was a greedy liar and now,” he stopped pacing and looked directly at me, “he’s dead.”
“Good riddance. Sounds to me like he deserved it.”
“You’re smart, Joy. It’s too bad about you.” He was smiling down at me.
“What do you mean?” My skin felt hot and my gut frozen.
“I mean that it’s too bad we didn’t meet under different circumstances. I think you could have worked for me.”
“Well, I did vote for you.”
He laughed. “Indeed you did, and I appreciate that.” He sat back down next to me and sniffed my hair, then stood up again.
“You know what I need, don’t you?”
“What?”
“I need Charlene Miller and the coins she’s got.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Wrong answer,” he raised his gun and aimed it at James’s foot.
“No!” I yelled, but with a silent thwap, a bullet raced through space. James’s foot began to pump out blood. He screamed through the scarf. James’s eyes filled with tears and turned red. “Stop! Stop!” I ran toward James, but the mayor knocked me back. Blue jumped to his feet and let out a warning growl. The mayor laughed.
“I can shoot you, too, you know,” he told Blue and then looked at me. “And you. Now, Charlene.”
“OK. I’ll find her. I just need to make a phone call. Give me a minute.” I looked over at James. His eyes were wide and he was pleading with me. “I’ll get her.”
The mayor motioned to my phone on the coffee table. My mind was racing. I had no way of reaching Charlene. Mulberry would never tell me where she was, and I didn’t have a clue. “Her number’s in my purse,” I said, buying myself a few more precious moments to think. The mayor nodded and waved at my purse. Picking it up, I rifled through it. My Taser was in there, but I had no way of pulling it out in time. James was already shot, and I could never make it to Kurt without getting a bullet wound myself. I pulled out my wallet and picked through the business cards.
“Hurry it up. Your brother is bleeding. I wouldn’t want to have to put another hole in him.” My hands were shaking as I stared at a business card for a fish restaurant in Baltimore I’d been to about a year ago. I dialed the number quickly forming a plan, hoping that a woman would pick up.
“Charlie’s Fish Shake,” a woman said.
“Charlene, I’m glad I caught you. I really need you to come over.” The woman tried to say something, but I kept talking. “It’s really important. It’s for your own safety.” Kurt smiled at that. I let the woman tell me I had the wrong number and then said, “Good, I’ll see you soon.”
“She’ll be here as soon as she can,” I lied.
“Where is she now?” he asked, sitting on the couch, just behind James.
“On the Lower East Side. That’s where she’s been living.”
“Clever girl.”
“Can I please bandage my brother’s foot?” The blood was slowly forming a puddle of red on the floor. Beads of sweat dotted James’s pale face.
“Sure, go ahead.” Kurt waved his gun at the injured foot. I went into the kitchen and gathered all the dishrags I owned. In the bathroom, I found an ancient bottle of hydrogen peroxide under the sink. I carried it back into the living room and tried to remember any first aid I could. The yellowed Heimlich maneuver poster from my first waitressing job wouldn’t leave my brain.
“I’m going to pour peroxide on it now.” James looked down at where I crouched near his foot. “OK?” He nodded and closed his eyes. I poured the liquid over the wound. It bubbled white and red. James moaned against his gag. “Alright, that part’s done,” I told him. “Now I’m going to wrap some towels around it. I’m going to wrap it really tight to try and stop the bleeding a little.” James nodded. I lifted his foot gently and put one of the rags underneath and then brought the two ends around. I tied it as tight as I could.
“I feel like there was something about a pencil and making a tourniquet. Do you remember anything like that?” James nodded. I turned to the mayor. “Can I take his gag off so that he can tell me how to make a tourniquet?”
“No.” The mayor chewed on the end of his cigar and watched me. I wrapped another rag around the foot and then another. I didn’t know if it was doing any good. When I was done, I sat on the floor near James’s foot.
“You’re good,” Kurt said. “That whole thing about it being for her safety, that was smart. I really do wish we could have been on the same team.”
“Me, too. Yours is obviously the winning one.”
“That’s true.” He smiled.
“You’ve probably been a winner your whole life.”
“Not my whole life, but most of it. You know, I’m just willing to go further than the next guy.”
“Is that how you do it?”
“It’s part of the reason I’m successful.” You would have thought he was a college professor and I, an eager coed. “But it’s also just a lot of hard work.”
“And quick thinking.”
“Of course, quick thinking.” He puffed on his cigar, then realized it was dead. The mayor put down his gun, reached into his pants pocket, and pulled out a silver lighter with gold edges.
“You’re going to kill us both, aren’t you?”
He looked over his cigar at me, puffing hard, getting the thing burning. “I’m afraid that I have to. But, Joy, before you get upset, let me say that I really like you. I respect you and your brother. He put up a real fight, you know. It was not easy to get him here. And that cat of his, what’s her name?” Kurt put the lighter back in his pocket and picked up his gun.
“Aurora.”
“Aurora fought for him. Look what she did to my ankle.” He pulled his pant leg up to reveal deep, angry scratches all along his Achilles. I couldn’t resist a smile for Aurora’s loyalty. “It was a shame I had to kill her.” My face fell.
“You killed her?”
“Joy, you know, I’m not really like this. If Tate and Joseph had stuck to the plan, if you had kept your nose out of it, if Charlene hadn’t tried to run, no one would have gotten hurt.” I looked up at him. He was serious. Not a hint of irony played across his face.
“Alright. I get it. Go ahead. I don’t want to drag it out anymore. Just kill me.” I spread my arms out, exposing my chest.
“Joy, don’t be like this.”
“How would you like me to be?” I stood up and walked to the windows. “Do you want me to beg for my life?” I heard him stand up.
“No, of course not. Just wait until it’s time. Come on. Sit down.” I turned around. He was pointing at the couch with his cigar, his gun arm hung by his side. When I didn’t answer him, he moved a step closer. “It’s just what has to happen,” he explained from only an arm’s length away.
“Do you want me to beg for my life?” A red blush started to spread up his neck.
“Stop it.” He came even closer. Adrenaline rushed through me, pushing my heart to pump faster, sharpening my vision, filling me with strength.
“How about I fight for it?” I grabbed for the arm with the gun in it and caught his hand as he tried to pull it away. He tried to point the gun at me, but I had both my hands on it. I twisted so my back was up against his chest, and the gun was in front of us where he couldn’t see it. He put the burning ember of his cigar into my shoulder. It was a white heat, and I screamed. He twisted the ember, and my skin smoked.
I lifted his gun hand up to my mouth and bit the soft flesh between his thumb and the rest of his hand. He grunted behind me and dropped the cigar. He tried to get some distance between us, but I kept my back pushed up against his chest. I felt his body’s shape and heat as he struggled to be free of me. Blue was barking and circling us. The mayor punched me in the kidneys but didn’t have enough room to put much strength behind it. My mouth filled with warm, salty blood when I broke through his skin.
He dropped the gun, and I followed it to the ground. It was slippery with blood and I struggled to gain control of it. Holding it with both hands, my finger on the trigger, I turned to face the mayor. He was aiming a small gun at my head. I watched as if in slow motion. He began to pull the trigger.
Blue, mouth open, fangs bared, catapulted himself at the mayor. Blue twisted in the air when the mayor fired, and an inconceivable bang ripped through the room. Blood exploded out of Blue’s shoulder and splattered my face, arms, and chest. His injured body landed on top of Kurt Jessup, knocking him back onto the couch. The mayor pushed Blue off him onto the floor. A large red stain marked where Blue’s wound had met with the mayor’s white shirt. Kurt stood up, and I concentrated on steadying my own gun.
“Just leave,” I told him.
“You haven’t won yet. I still have a gun.” He leveled it at my chest. My heart was pumping so loud I could barely hear.
“Just leave,” I tried again.
“You can’t pull that trigger.”
“Don’t tempt me.” He took a step toward me, and I took a step back. I felt I could see the life rushing through him. I watched his chest rise and fall with each breath. He took another step toward me. I fired a warning shot above his head that sank into my molding. He stopped.
“Get out now.”
“I can’t leave without Charlene.”
“You’re going to have to.”
“Do you think you can go far enough?”
“I can go as far as I need to.” He turned quickly and fired a shot into James’s chest. My heart stopped beating, and the floor fell out from under me. My vision tunneled. I didn’t even notice the gun slipping away from me as I watched the blood drain out of James’s face.
“Tempted?” The mayor was smiling at me, a smattering of James’s blood on his cheek. I ran to my brother’s side and pulled the gag from his mouth.
“You’re going to be OK.”
“I know.” His breath was coming in gurgles. I ripped my shirt over my head and pressed it against the wound.
“James, you hold on! Do you hear me?” My vision became blurred with tears. “Nona!” I screamed. “Nona call the police! An ambulance! Call an ambulance!”
The mayor was watching us, the small gun held loosely in his hand. I looked over at him, then down at my brother. James smiled at me and said, “I love you, Joy.”
“Stop it. You’re fine. You’re fine.” I pushed some hair off his forehead. “I love you, James.”
I was filled with something I can’t even describe as rage or sorrow because it was so much more than that. I could feel the mayor watching us, and I wanted to shoot him, but not just shoot him. I wanted to destroy him. I wanted more than his death. I wanted him to have never existed. I could see that my brother was going to die right here. He was going to die.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said, his gun aimed at me. Before I thought, or he blinked, I was on top of him. I flew on him, slamming us to the ground. The gun clattered to the floor. My eyes blind with tears, I wrapped my legs around him, pinning him to the floor. I threw my fist at his face, connecting as often as not.
He tried to wriggle away, out of my grip, I held him between my thighs. He kicked at me but I was sitting too high on his chest for him to touch me. I kept striking at his face. His skin was warm. Its life, its color, made me insane. I tore at it with my nails, trying to make him bleed.
I pushed my thumb into his eye socket. His face contorted and he fought harder. I put my other thumb in his other socket and pushed. “Stop!” he yelled, but I kept going. He shook his head, so I gripped it with both my hands and slammed his skull against the floor, then I held on tight while I pushed his eyes. I could feel their shape, his pulse running through them. I was breathing hard. I was about to push his eyes all the way to the back of his skull. I wanted to blind him. I wanted to hurt him. I needed to kill him. But then something inside me balked, and for just a moment, a millisecond, I didn’t want to be a murderer.
He sensed my hesitation, and planting his feet on the ground, bucked me off him. I flew forward, landing on my face, and he scrambled to his feet. He whirled around, searching for the gun, his face swollen. He looked over at me, and I saw that he was scared.
“Leave,” I told him from the ground. He was breathing hard. Sirens wailed in the distance. “The police are coming. You better just leave.”
“Not without Charlene.” I stood up. He scanned the floor for the gun. I saw one under my bookshelf far out of his vision. The other was behind his left foot under the couch.
“She’s not coming.” His head shot up, and his eyes narrowed. I practically saw the decision happen. It was like the change in a person’s eye when they see someone they know—the look of recognition. He’d lost this one. Kurt Jessup didn’t waste any time. He turned and left, not bothering to close the door.
Wasteful
When the paramedics arrived, I’d untied James and was holding him in my arms. They pushed me aside and started to work on him in a flurry. Nona followed closely behind them. She wrapped me in an embrace and covered my face so I couldn’t see anything. She whispered in my ear that it would all be OK. But I knew she was wrong. I knew that James was going to die, and I knew that it was my fault. Even in the dark warmth of Nona’s assurance, I knew.
I rode in the back of the ambulance. It bumped and shook as we raced, sirens blaring, through the streets of Brooklyn. A siren sounds different when you’re in it. It’s not the usual approach and retreat, where you hear the siren coming, then you listen as it keeps going, away from you to someone else. When you’re in it, the siren is squatting on top of you. It’s wailing for you.
At the hospital, nurses and doctors in blue and pink scrubs loaded James onto a gurney and wheeled him away from me through large double doors that flapped back and forth. A well-intentioned nurse in her late fifties tried to take a look at me—maybe give me some stitches for the cuts on my face, X-rays for my injured neck. But I pushed her off and watched the doors flap. Someone wrapped a blanket around my bare shoulders.
Hugh arrived, eyes wide, face drained. “Joy. My God, what happened?” But I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t speak. I just stared at him. It was all my fault. I opened my mouth and closed it. “Is he going to be OK?” Hugh asked. Seeing the answer on my face, his eyes started to shine. “Joy, what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and began to cry. My throat constricted painfully. I squeezed my eyes shut until the blackness was dotted with white spots. I felt Hugh hugging me and shaking.
A police officer in uniform tried to ask me questions. I didn’t turn to look at him. He squatted next to me and kept talking until he stopped. He stood back up and sighed. Then he walked into my vision and through the flapping doors.
Nona arrived. She hustled and bustled around us, getting us coffee and Danishes that sat untouched. She talked to the nurse about insurance and held paperwork under my nose to sign. “They are going to perform surgery.” She rubbed my back in a circular motion. “He has a chance.” Nona was playing the part of pillar of strength, but her red eyes gave her away.
“Joy, you need to see a doctor yourself,” Hugh told me after a while of waiting.
“After.”
“After what?”
“After we find out about James, I’ll let them take care of me. Let them take care of him now.”
“Joy, they can look after both of you at the same time.”
“No.” I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them.
After a time, a doctor came out from behind the doors that led to the part of the hospital we weren’t allowed in and introduced himself as Dr. Mufflin. “I was one of the physicians working on your brother. We did everything we could, but I’m afraid he didn’t make it. He fought hard, but his wounds were just too severe.”
Alone
I woke up between clean sheets with my head supported by two fluffy pillows. I blinked in the darkness and saw Hugh asleep, his head at an awkward angle, in a chair next to my bed. A curtain surrounded us, providing the illusion of privacy. I could hear a roommate snoring.
I tried to sit up and realized there were tubes going into my arm. I looked at the machines next to me. Little green lights glowed in the dark. I fumbled around trying to see what was attached to me. I found a small round thing with a button on it. I pushed the button and felt instantly more relaxed. I pushed it again and floated into a deep sleep.
Sun was streaming through a large window when I opened my eyes for the second time. The curtain was gone, along with Hugh and my snoring roommate. I knew I was in the hospital. I knew my brother was dead.
I started crying. It hurt my throat and burned the cut on my cheek, but it felt better than not crying. I cried so hard that I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. I felt I was caught in a wave, and it was spinning me around. I didn’t know which way was up and which was down. I became afraid that I would drown.
Hugh was suddenly at my side. “It’s OK. I’m here,” he said, holding my face against his chest. His love only made me feel more lost. I didn’t deserve his comfort or friendship. I had taken away the man he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with. It was my fault.
I couldn’t breathe, and I felt pressure building inside me. Hugh reached over, and pushed that little button. I forgot where I was, another click, why I was there, another click, who I was, one last click, what I had lost.
When I woke up, the sun was setting, filling my room with a soft orange glow. Hugh and a doctor were talking in hushed tones, and one of Nona’s crocheted blankets warmed my feet. Hugh saw that I was awake and hurried to my side. The doctor left the room. “Hey, how do you feel?” My throat was dry, and I told him as much. He picked up a plastic cup from the bedside table and held its straw to my face. I sipped up water and felt it travel down my throat into my belly. I felt foggy and wobbly. I let my head fall back onto the pillow.
“I thought you might like to know that Blue is going to be OK.”
“He saved my life.”
“I don’t know if you’re up for this, but there are some police here.” I didn’t respond. “They want to talk to you about what happened. You know, the longer we wait, the less we have a chance of catching whoever did this. Nona gave them a description of the guy she saw going into your house with James, but she only saw the back of his head. You’re really the one they want to talk to. Did you know the guy, Joy?” My brain was in too thick of a haze to figure out what to say, so I just didn’t say anything. Hugh looked up and out the window.
“There’s something else I need to talk to you about.” He cleared his throat. “Your mother is on her way with Bill.” It almost upset me. “I don't think I’ll be allowed to visit you once she gets here, and I’m afraid she’s going to try and mess with the funeral plans.” Hugh choked up. I put my hand on top of his.
“I’ll talk to her. Don’t worry. We won’t let her ruin his memory.” Hugh swallowed and attempted a smile.
“James had a will, so it shouldn’t be a problem, but I just don’t trust your mother.”
“Me, neither.”
“She should be here by tomorrow morning.”
“OK, I’ll prepare myself. I’ve got to lay off whatever is in that clicky thing.”
Hugh laughed. “Morphine.”
“It’s good stuff.” The door opened, and Nona walked in.
“You’re awake. Wonderful. Alright, Hugh, she’s awake, not in a fit of tears, so now you can go home for a while.”
“I can wait a little more,” he said.
“No you can’t. Joy, this young man has to go home, because he has been here for over 24 hours.
“Hugh, go home and take a shower, get a change of clothes. I’ll be fine.” I smiled at him hoping he would go.
He inspected my face. “I’m fine. I can stay.”
“Hugh, it would make me feel bad.”
“Well, I can’t go home.” His face tightened. “It's a crime scene.” Nona’s mouth dropped at her own insensitivity. “I don’t know if I can ever go back there.” Hugh hung his head. Nona crossed the room and put her arms around him. He leaned into her, and I saw him grasp at her blouse, squeezing it in his fingers.
“You can go to my house,” she told him. Hugh’s breath caught in his throat, and he began to cry. He sobbed into her shoulder. I held back my own tears with what strength I had left. “I have to bury Aurora,” he cried. Tears sneaked out of my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to his back. He turned to me, big, wet tears streaming down his face.
“It’s not your fault,” he said and sat down on the bed next to me. Nona put her arms around us both, and soon all three of us were sobbing. We cried for James, for Aurora, for ourselves, and for each other.
My Mother
Hours later, Nona was crocheting in the chair next to me, Hugh was showering in a nearby hotel, and I floated in a comforting morphine sea. Each time I began to think, started to feel pain, I clicked on my button, and away I would go.
My mother was arriving the next morning. I needed to figure out what to say to the police. The gentle click of crochet needles and the warm fuzz in my brain kept me, if not happy, at least unaware.
It was dark and quiet in the hospital when I reached for my button and didn’t find it. I blinked in the darkness and saw Nona’s frame silhouetted in the light leaking under the door.
“That’s enough now,” she said softly.
“That’s up to the doctor, Nona,” I argued.
“You’ve had enough.”
“I’m in pain,” I whispered. My whole body felt sour. I needed my medicine.
“You have to deal with it.”
“The doctor knows how much pain I’m in. The doctor gave it to me. You can’t take it away.”
“My second husband died because of this.” She held the controller out to her side, and I saw its shape in the darkness. I reached out for it but didn’t even get close. “He was hurt in the Korean war. He had shrapnel in his hip and posterior. It made walking painful. But more than that, it made him afraid. The doctors gave him little blue pills,” she swallowed loudly and continued, her voice heavy with emotion. “They took away the pain in his body, and they blotted out the memories that haunted him. He had been to hell and back, and those little blue pills let him hide from that. You can’t hide from hell, Joy. It came for him as it always will, and he wasn’t ready. Accidentally or on purpose I’ll never know, but what I do know is that I’m not letting you march into this thing dulled on painkillers.” She leaned over and kissed my forehead. “One day you’ll thank me.”
“Nona, please. It hurts.”
“It’s bound to.” She sat back down, taking my button with her.
“Nona. I won’t be able to sleep without it. How will I face tomorrow without a good night’s sleep?” The clicking of the crochet needles started again. “Nona.” She didn’t respond. I leaned back. The pillows felt lumpy.
I didn’t sleep again until light seeped into the sky and through the drawn blinds. Two hours later, I woke believing I was drowning in James’s blood. I sat up with a start, painfully pulling on tubes in my arms. Sweat drenched my hospital gown. I was staring straight ahead at the white wall opposite me, breathing hard, when I felt another presence in the room. My mother sat in the chair by my bed watching me.
“Are you OK?” she asked. It took me a minute to realize she was real and not some sick twist in my dream.
“Hi, Ma.” She smiled and looked down at her hands, which were folded on top of her floral-printed skirt. I leaned back on the pillow and closed my eyes, steeling myself for the conversation ahead. It’d been almost a year since my mother and I last spoke.
“It’s good to see you,” she told me. I thought about our last conversation, its escalation into a screaming match, the hurt and anger I’d felt then. Funny how I used to think that was hard. I wish that was what hard was.
“James is dead, Ma.”
“I know that.” She began to twist the simple gold band on her wedding finger.
“Is Bill here?”
“He took our things to the hotel. I came straight here. He’s just heartbroken about this whole thing.” I couldn't help but snort.
“Did you see Nona?” I asked.
“Yes, she went home for a little while.”
“Did you see Hugh?”
Her lips pursed. “Yes, he was arriving at the same time I was.”
“I hope you didn’t say anything cruel.” She opened her mouth wide to show me her shock.
“I don’t know what you think of me, but I would never. That young man, as confused as he may be, is in pain, and I would not want to do anything to injure him further.”
“He’s not confused, Ma. You are.” She stood up and walked over to the window.
“Nice view.”
“Ma, James left a will.”
“I know.” She didn’t turn to look at me.
“Hugh told me he had provisions in it about his funeral.” She nodded. “I want you to promise me you won’t try and interfere with that.” She didn’t answer me. “Ma?”
“Bill says that—”
“F*ck Bill, Ma. I don’t give a shit what that a*shole thinks or says.”
She turned on me. “He is your father,” she said with all the fierceness of a stray kitten’s hiss.
“No, Ma. Dad’s dead. Bill is just who you married. He’s warped your mind against your own children. Can’t you see that?”
“James and you have turned against God, don’t you understand?” She came to my bedside. “Jesus is your only hope for salvation.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I just wish that James could have understood that before he—” Her voice faded away.
“Before he was murdered, Ma. Murdered.” I had started to cry without noticing. “You think he’s in hell, don’t you?” She looked at the ground with wet eyes. “He didn’t go to hell. No one as good as him, as true as him, could go to hell.”
“I feel like this is all my fault. If I hadn’t let the devil rule our lives for so long,” she wrung her hands and watched the linoleum floor, “then you two might understand how important Jesus’s love is.”
“Jesus Christ, shut up. I don’t need this shit right now.” My tears evaporated. “Our childhood was fine until you started drinking. And even then it was better than this bullshit.” I waved a hand at her bad haircut, her thick shoulder pads, her gold cross necklace and the pamphlets about Jesus I knew to be in her ridiculous purse.
“Now you can say what you want about me, but taking the Lord’s name in vain—really, Joy.” She pulled herself up tall. I hung my head, which she took to mean an admittance of defeat instead of the pure fatigue it really was. “Now Joy, I think that your brother, sitting from where he is now, would appreciate a service that glorifies God.” I looked up at her. Her eyes were glowing the way only religious fervor can make eyes glow.
“No.”
She exhaled. “I’m your mother.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to deny James’s entire life.”
“I don’ deny his life.” She leaned over and took my hand. “I just think it’s important for you to realize God did this for a reason.”
“Did what?” A burning started in my chest.
“Called him to Him.”
“Killed him?” She nodded. “You think James was murdered because he was gay?”
“It happens all the time. The Lord works right here on Earth.” I pulled my hand away.
“He was your son,” I told her.
“We are all God’s children,” she rebutted.
“You are so cold.”
She reached for my hand again, but I recoiled from her. “Don’t you understand? I am filled with God’s love.”
“Ma, if you try and make this funeral about God instead of James, I will never speak to you again, do you understand me?”
“Joy, my path is clear”
“Ma, please.”
“I’m going to do what I feel is best for my own son. Now, let’s talk about something else.”
“You can’t. He had a will.”
“There’s a police officer who wants to see you. I’ve already spoken to him.”
“Ma.”
“It’s important that he speak to you, and I told him that I would call him as soon as you were awake. I’ll be right back.” She leaned in to try and kiss me, but I dodged her. She looked at me and said, “I hope one day, before it’s too late, you will come to understand,” as she pursed her lips and looked at me with eyes full of something I don’t understand. “Why won’t you just let Jesus share some of your burden?”
“Because I don’t need him. I can take responsibility for myself. My success and my failures are mine and mine alone.”
“That’s what you are, Joy. Alone.” She looked at me. She was angry and hurt and full of loathing. “Your whole life you’ve been alone.”
“I've never been alone.” I sat up and felt shooting pains in all sort of places. “I always had James. When you were drunk and destroying our lives, when Dad was dying, when you were getting sober and finding God, I had James. And even now, when he’s dead, I still have him. I feel bad for you that you never got to know him.”
“He was my son.”
“And you never knew him. You never understood him, and you never tried. Just get out.” She reached a hand toward me, her eyes wet. I slapped it away, too angry to find compassion, even for my own mother. She held the slapped hand to her chest, opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it and walked to the door. She opened it and then turned to me. “Joy, the devil is at your doorstep.” Her voice quivered. “If you invite him in—” Her fear at my fate stopped the words in her throat. My eyes burned, and I turned away from her. The door closed.
Hugh walked in minutes later. “She is an unbelievable bitch,” I told him before the door had a chance to swing shut.
“No.”
“Yes. She believes that from where James is now, he would want his funeral to glorify God.”
“No.” The blood was quickly draining from Hugh’s face.
“She thinks you guys were confused. She thinks we’re all God’s children.”
“It’s OK. He had a will.”
“Oh, she’ll get all her ridiculous God-loving buddies down here and they’ll sue or protest or something. ‘Bill says Bill says.’” I did a lousy impression of my mother.“Calm down. It’ll be alright.” Hugh sat down on the edge of my bed. “No matter what she does she can’t ruin our memories. Even if Jesus himself protests, we’ll know. Right?”
“No wonder my brother loved you.” He smiled. “What does his will actually say about his funeral?”
“Well, he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“And totally illegal. So I figure we’ll do it at night and then just run like crazy.”
I laughed. “How James is that?”
“I know.” Nona has offered to host a service for all his friends and family at her place first, then we can walk in a procession to the bridge. I figure there’s strength in numbers. If the cops try to arrest us, we can always just scatter.”
“Hugh, it’s hard to scatter on a bridge.”
“Don’t be such a defeatist,” he smiled.
“Sorry.”
“There’s something else.”
“Yeah.”
“James had life insurance.”
“That’s weird.”
“The point is, it was a $100,000 policy.”
“Wow.”
“And he left it all to you."”
“To me?” He nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
“You look tired.”
“Hmm?”
“You look tired. You want to watch TV for a little while?”
“Yeah, sure.” I couldn’t believe that my brother, my best friend, had a $100,000 life insurance policy. “Why didn’t he tell me?” I asked Hugh, who was flipping through the stations on the little TV hanging on the wall.
“I don’t know.” He turned to look at me. “He just wanted to make sure that if something happened to him, you would be OK. I mean, he knew you would be OK, but he just thought this would make it easier.”
I looked up at the TV in time to watch the channel change from Judge Joe Brown to New York One. The mayor’s wife stood before an audience in front of a new building. “I know my husband would love to be here today. This shelter behind me means as much to him as it does to me. But even the mayor of New York gets the flu.” A smattering of laughter rose from the crowd. “This new building will provide respite for the thousands of homeless mothers and children on the streets of New York. But beyond that, it will also offer educational opportunities that we hope will allow them to get off the streets and stay off them.” The crowd clapped with enthusiasm. The first lady of New York smiled a perfect smile. On her ears, glinted large gold earrings.
As the news cut to a commercial, Declan Doyle knocked on the door. Hugh excused himself as I clicked off the TV. Declan sat on the chair next to my bed and reached out to hold my hand. I found it hard to look at him. “How are you?” he asked softly.
“Not good.”
“What happened?”
“The mayor killed my brother and tried to kill me and my dog,” I blurted out. Declan dropped my hand.
“Shit. Have you told anyone else?”
Relief washed over me. He believed me. It felt amazing to have it off my chest. “I have not talked to anyone else. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Alright,” Doyle stood up and crossed to the window. “I’ll get you some money and you can get out of here.”
“What?”
“You’ve got to go Joy, you’ve got to run.” He looked back at me, his brow was creased, and he frowned. “I’m sorry, but it’s the way it’s got to be.”
“What, and let him get away with it?” I sat up in bed, pushing the covers back.
“What?” Declan laughed. “You think you’re going to take him down? You’re going to stop Kurt Jessup.”
“Well—”
“Joy, he will be taken care of, I’m sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Karma, sweetheart.” He smiled at me.
“You’re joking. My brother’s been murdered and you’re joking with me right now. Are you f*cking mad?”
“I’m not the one claiming that the mayor is a killer. You sound crazy Joy, and that’s how everyone will treat you.”
“Get out,” I said.
“Look, I know you’re upset, but I’m trying to help you.”
“Really, because it sounds like you’re trying to help the murdering bastard who killed my brother!”
“Joy, calm down.”
“Get the f*ck out of this room before I make you.” I picked up my glass of water and threw it at him. It fell short, spilling all over the floor.
Declan looked down at it. “Joy, listen to me. I really like you. You’re a hell of a girl. That’s why I’m telling you that if you want to live, get your shit together and leave New York City by the end of the month.” He looked up from the floor and caught my eyes with his. “I can’t help you after that.”
“What does that mean?”
But Doyle didn’t answer me. He stepped over the spilled water and walked out the door.