“Who’s closed now?” the geezer cried in a high, cracked voice. A fleck of the blasted glass had come back at him, embedding itself in his cheek. “Who’s closed now, ya shits?”
He raised the gun to fire again. People drew back. A man holding a sleeping girl in a corduroy romper tripped over the outstretched legs of the woman leaning against the building. He put out his hands to break his fall, dropping his burden. The sleeping girl fell to the pavement with a thud. As her father went down beside her, one of his hands tore straight through the caul covering the face of the sitting woman’s daughter. There was no pause; the child’s eyes flew open and she sat up ramrod straight. Her face was a goblin’s mask of hate and fury. She dropped her mouth to the man’s hand, chomped down on his fingers, and writhed forward, snake-like, from her mother’s grasp so she could dig her thumb into the man’s right cheek and her fingers into his left eye.
The geezer turned and aimed his gun—a long-barreled revolver that looked like an antique to Frank—at the writhing, snarling child.
“No!” the mother cried, attempting to shield her daughter. “No, not my baby!”
Frank turned to protect his own daughter, and drove one foot backward into the geezer’s crotch. The geezer gasped and tottered backward. Frank kicked his gun away. The people who had run over here from Urgent Care were now fleeing in all directions. Frank had sent the geezer stumbling into the foyer of the Women’s Center, where he overbalanced and sprawled amid the littered glass. His hands and face were bleeding. The man’s granddaughter lay facedown (what face, Frank thought).
Elaine seized Frank’s shoulder. “Come on! This is crazy! We need to go!”
Frank ignored her. The little girl was still clawing at the man who had inadvertently woken her from her unnatural sleep. She had torn open the flesh under his right eye, and the eyeball bulged out, the cornea filling with blood. Frank couldn’t help the guy, not with Nana in his arms, but the man didn’t need help. He seized the little girl with one hand and hurled her away.
“No! Oh, no!” the girl’s mother cried, and scrambled after her daughter.
The man fixed on Frank and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. “I think that child blinded me in one of my eyes.”
This is a nightmare, Frank thought. It must be.
Elaine was yanking at him. “We need to go! Frank, we have to!”
Frank followed her toward the Outback, plodding now. As he passed the woman who had been leaning against the side of the Women’s Center, he saw that the little girl’s caul was re-knitting itself over her face with amazing speed. Her eyes had closed. The expression of fury disappeared. A look of untroubled serenity took its place. Then she was gone, buried in white fluff. The child’s mother picked her up, cradled her, and began to kiss her bloody fingers.
Elaine was almost back to the car, yelling for him to keep up. Frank broke into a shambling run.
2
At the kitchen counter, Jared collapsed onto one of the bar seats and dry-swallowed a couple of aspirin from the bottle that his mother left beside the loose change dish. There was a note on the counter from Anton Dubcek about the elm trees in the backyard and the name of a tree surgeon he recommended. Jared stared at this piece of paper. What manner of surgery could one perform on a tree? Who taught Anton Dubcek, who presented as a near imbecile, how to spell, and to do so in such nice, clear handwriting? And wasn’t he the pool guy? But he knew about trees, too? Would the state and health of the Norcross family yard ever be a matter of any significance again? Was Anton still going to clean pools if all the women in the world were asleep? Well, fuck, why wouldn’t he? Guys liked to swim, too.
Jared ground his dirty fists into his eye sockets and took deep breaths. He needed to get it together, get showered, get changed. He needed to talk to his parents. He needed to talk to Mary.
The house phone went off, the sound strange and unfamiliar. It hardly ever rang except in election years.
Jared reached for it, and of course he knocked it from the cradle and onto the tile on the other side of the counter. The handset broke apart, the backing popping loose with a plastic snap, and the batteries scattered across the floor.
He picked his way across the living room, supporting himself on furniture as he went, and grabbed up the other phone from the occasional table beside the armchair. “Hello?”
“Jared?”
“None other.” He sat in the leather armchair with a groan of relief. “How’s it going, Dad?” No sooner had he asked it than it struck him what a dumb question that was.
“Are you okay? I’ve been calling your cell phone. Why didn’t you answer?”
His father’s voice was tight, which wasn’t all that surprising. Things probably weren’t too super at the prison. It was, after all, a women’s prison. Jared had no intention of letting his father worry about him. The ostensible reason for this choice was something anyone ought to be able to understand: in the middle of an unprecedented crisis, his father didn’t need anything else on his plate. The true reason, barely submerged, was that he was ashamed. He’d gotten his ass kicked by Eric Blass, his phone had been destroyed, and before limping his way home, he’d lain in the ditch and sobbed. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk to his dad about. He didn’t want anyone telling him it was all right, because it wasn’t. And he didn’t want to be asked how he felt about it. How did he feel? Shitty pretty well covered it.
“I fell down the steps at school.” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. Broke my phone in the process. That’s why you couldn’t get through. I’m sorry. I think it’s still under warranty, though. I’ll go over to the Verizon place myself and—”
“Are you hurt?”
“I twisted my knee pretty good, actually.”
“That’s all? You didn’t hurt anything besides your knee? Tell me the truth.”
Jared wondered if his father knew something. What if someone had seen? It made his stomach hurt to consider. He knew what his father would say if he knew; he’d say he loved him and that he hadn’t done anything wrong; he’d say it was the other guys who had done something wrong. And yes, he would want to be sure Jared was in touch with his feelings.
“Of course that’s all. Why would I lie?”
“I’m not accusing you, Jere, I only wanted to be sure. I’m just relieved to finally have you on the phone, hear your voice. Things are bad. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I heard the news.” More than that, he’d seen the news: Old Essie in the lean-to, the gossamer white mask welded to her face.
“Have you talked to Mary?”
“Not since before lunch.” He said he planned to check in with her shortly.