It’s heavy and smells funny like change in Mommy’s pockabook.
I’m told I leveled my father’s .38 Magnum at her as she sat in the little bouncy chair with the stuffed birds hanging overhead. Go play with grown-up toy. Go to my room. I hear Lola in her room. She makes a song-noise. “So cute” Mommy says and I say it too when I hear it. She liked to sing along with the bouncy chair’s recorded music, cooing off-beat. Over her head, stuffed birds rotated slowly on their axes, captivating her.
So cute!
I’m told she would only nap in the bouncy chair, that she loved the stuffed birds and the birdsong that the chair played for her. Go into Lola’s room. She’s in bouncy bouncy chair, go bouncy bouncy. Singsongy noises. She would stare at the birds and babble her version of the birdsong for endless precious minutes.
Lola sees me. Eyes wide. Smiles and says “hah-dah!” But then she saw me.
“Hah-dah! Hah-dah!” She couldn’t speak, but she could exclaim. She could erupt with syllables without warning, sometimes blurting out a single sound, then falling silent, other times repeating them in a staccato verbal tattoo over and over.
Swings her arms and giggles. Bouncy chair jiggles. I laugh too. So cute. So funny.
She sees me she smiles her big open toothless smile she smiles with her whole face with every part of her. That day, she said, “Hah-dah!”
Lola is my sister love my sister she’s so cute and she loves her big brother Mommy says she loves her big brother. God, I remember it.
Loves when I play with her when I clap for her.
She swings her arms again, “Hah-dah! Hah-dah!” Claps her hands. I remember it so well. “Hah-dah!”
I swing my arms, clap for her.
I’m told it was point-blank range and that I shot her one time. There’s a BIGSOUND and I fall back. It was one shot. I don’t remember pulling the trigger. Or aiming. I think it was genuinely an accident.
Which, really, is all it takes. BIGSOUND. So big! My ears hurt. Ears hurt so much!
She was four months old. I’m told. My ears hurt! Everything hurts! Why am I hurt? I’m shaking. My head hurts, my legs hurt, my arms hurt. I peed in my pants and Mommy will be mad.
I’m told Mom got there first, the back door being close to the nursery. My father arrived a few seconds later and I was on the floor, blacked out from the kick of the pistol, which knocked me across the room. Mommy here now. Mommy! Mommy! I hurt! I hurt! Up, Mommy! Up! Up! I didn’t black out. Not for an instant. The kick of the Magnum knocked me off my feet, threw me back against the wall. It’s a miracle the recoil didn’t break my shoulder.
Mommy not looking at me. Mommy crying and then Daddy screaming and Mommy crying Daddy mad.
I’m told Mom screamed and screamed, clawing at her own face at the sight before her. What happened?
What happened?
Pee in my pants.
Where’s Lola? Why is there red?
Local legend has it that my father, fearing she would gouge her own eyes out or tear her face to ribbons, deliberately punched her out cold. Mommy gone. Want Mommy! Everything hurts! Everything hurts all over! WANT MOMMY! My father did not punch my mother. He shoved her out of the room. I watched. He shoved her out of the room and cast about, as though looking for something, anything, that was not the tableau before him. Arms outstretched, reaching, grasping, his hands desperate for purchase, to grab hold of reality and warp it, bend it to his will, coming up only with air.
He dropped to his knees near me, keening.
I have no reason not to believe any of the things I’ve been told. Why is there so much red? What happened? What happened? Except that so many of them are not true. But the ones that matter are.
I could only lay there, dumb and howling in pain and confusion.
I’m told so many things. Where’s Lola? Wondering.
I was a child. It was an accident. It wasn’t my fault. Why is there so much red? Not understanding. But I understand now.
I’m told. Where’s Lola???? But I’ve never told.
I was four years old. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH RED?
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH RED?
The Present
I remember. I’ve always remembered. There hasn’t been a moment of my life when I haven’t remembered.
And it hasn’t helped at all.
Which means nothing will ever help.
Which means I’ll never get over it. Never never never.
Which means there’s only one thing to do.
I’ve known it all along.
One thing and it’s an easy thing, so easy, and I’m so angry at myself for waiting so long. I should have done it years ago. I never should have met Aneesa. I never should have met Evan. I should have been dead so long ago.
Me: Can I come over?
Evan: Now?
Me: Yeah
Evan: 2night’s the thing
Me: I know. I just left something at your house is all
Me: Five minutes, in and out
Me: No one will know
Evan: OK
It takes forever to get to Evan’s house on my bike. By the time I get there, on the other side of town, the sun is just starting to dip in the sky, but the heat and the humidity have clung to the dregs of the day and to my back, my forehead, my armpits. I’m exhausted and spent and wet from head to toe, and the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that it’s almost over. Almost. So close.
There are half a dozen expensive cars parked in the Danforths’ roundabout driveway, and more to come. Evan answers the door in a tuxedo. I try to remember how I should respond to this. Snarky? Faux impressed? I discover that I can’t summon the proper reaction, and I fear I’m lost already, but Evan takes one look at me and says, “Jesus, don’t let my mom see you, okay?”
On the first Friday evening of the school year, the Danforths throw an expensive, black-tie-only fund-raiser for whichever subject areas or extracurricular activities their offspring have chosen to indulge in that year. It’s their way, I’m sure, of compensating their own egos for their children’s refusal to attend private schools. When Richard Jr. went to South Brook, the football team was the best funded in the state. Evan is pretty much single-handedly guaranteeing that the drama program and the jazz band will be flush for his four years at South Brook.
The price for this largesse? The Danforth children must attend the soiree, attired appropriately. Hence, Evan’s tux. And further hence, the rich people within, with more to arrive soon, explaining Evan’s insistence that his mother not see me in my disheveled state.
“Up and down, in and out,” I promise. “It’s just a DVD I left in—”
“Just go,” he stage-whispers, gesturing me in, furtively checking all around to be certain no one notices his poor, underdressed, sweating, stinking buddy.
I scramble up the stairs. I really did leave a DVD here at the beginning of the summer, but I don’t care about it.
I only care about Mr. Danforth’s office.
About the rifle case.