“I guess I am.”
“About the overuse of electronic effects in rock music?”
“About ditching something if it’s doing you no good and even hurting you.”
He was staring at her very hard and very seriously. She leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. “Your dad’s not going to hurt me again,” she told him. “I won’t let him. You’ve got my word on that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay then. Go. Sleep. You’ll be a zombie in the morning.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you,” Liz said. “You and Moll are my whole world.” It was the simple truth. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep them safe and to keep them together.
Zac went off to bed at last, visibly staggering, and Liz went into the kitchen to clear up the mess there. Zac had picked up all the fallen groceries, but he was deathly squeamish and hadn’t even attempted to tackle the bloodstains on the floor or the furniture. Seeing them again now brought the whole experience back to Liz with terrifying clarity. The feeling of being a passive observer of her own body, forced into the passenger seat as it moved of its own accord.
Was she going mad? Or just trying to duck the responsibility for what she’d done? But that made no sense because she didn’t regret it. She was absolutely certain she would be dead now if she hadn’t hit back at Marc when she did. She couldn’t conceive which part of her had found the strength to resist him, but she wasn’t trying to get any distance from it. God, she wished it had shown itself sooner. A whole lot of bad shit might never have happened.
But then again, neither would Zac and Molly. Whatever she thought of the choices she made, they were the counterbalance that kept her from wishing for what might have been. Any world that didn’t have them in it wasn’t worth living in.
The second time was different.
Liz had been afraid at first, and very much on her guard, but three weeks of business as usual had disarmed her fears. Her cuts had healed nicely. Beebee had called to say that the police were pressing charges of assault against Marc. He was remanded on a bail bond of twenty thousand dollars, the money having been posted by one J. Langdon.
Jamie. Standing by her man.
The next day, Liz had gone down to the precinct building to review her statement with a lawyer named Jeremy Naylor, who worked in the county attorney’s office. She was amazed at how young Naylor looked: he had peach fuzz hair and the baby face of an innocent untouched by the world. But his questions showed a keen mind applying itself with complete concentration to a congenial task. When they were done, he said he would have a court date arranged by the end of the week.
That was the good news. He proceeded to give her the bad. “There’s no way we’ll be on the docket before October, Ms. Kendall, and that’s optimistic. I don’t like the thought of your ex-husband having ready access to you all that time. I think we should apply for a TRO—that’s kind of an interim restraint order, issued on the basis of perceived risk. It’s a long shot. The defense will argue that it’s prejudicial, which, you know, they will have a valid point. But I’d like to give it a try all the same. For the sake of your peace of mind, and mine. Can you be free at short notice this week or next week? This will be a motion in judge’s chambers, and it will mostly be based on the police paperwork, but you might still have to go in and talk about your past history with Marc if the judge asks for specifics.”
Liz said yes, she could get the time off work. She would take it unpaid if she had to.
She went home feeling like her life was getting back on the rails. The doctor at West Penn had been right after all: everything that had happened had been a side effect of the assault she had suffered. A trauma artifact, as he put it. So long as she avoided being throttled and slammed into tiled floors, there was no reason it should ever happen to her again.
Everything was looking up. The weather had stayed fine. Molly had gone four whole weeks without an asthma attack. All three of them had watched The Wizard of Oz and the kids had been enthralled. True, Liz had had to work fourteen hours’ worth of overtime to pay what she owed for her medical bills, but in her upbeat mood that had mostly been enjoyable. “I don’t understand how you can smile like that when you’re working the concessions stand,” her colleague Bella had marveled. “You know you’re gonna smell like burgers and fries all day, right?”
“Absolutely,” Liz shot back. “And guys go crazy for that smell. I’ll be getting more action than I can handle.” She picked up a lettuce leaf from the fixings tray and rubbed it behind her ears. “There. That should bring the vegetarians to the yard too.”
Bella guffawed and lowered the bar still further with a joke about why vegans give the best head. When Nora DoSanto, their supervisor, came by a few minutes later, she had to tell them to dial down the smut out of respect for the Pixar movie that was showing in screen three.
“Sorry, Nora,” Liz said, still giggling.
“Sorry, boss,” Bella echoed.
Liz felt like she was waking up after a long, troubled sleep. She even went back to doing the occasional volunteer shift at Serve the Homeless, which she’d stopped the previous spring when money and time were too tight and somehow never started again. She was back in the world, and the world made sense.
Then, like lightning out of a clear sky, she had another attack—and it was worse than the first.
It was a weekday morning, so Liz was dropping Zac and Molly off at school. Zac hit the ground running, taking off with a hurried “Bye, Mom!” as soon as she pulled up outside Julian C. Barry. No hugs or kisses. Public displays of affection with parents were kryptonite for teens, as Liz well knew.
At Worth Harbor, though, she took her time like always. She got to use one of the two disabled spaces right next to the front gate on account of Molly’s chest. The alternative was to park round the back of the school, which was a long trek for Moll at the start of the day.
She walked Molly to the steps and knelt to give her a hug which was enthusiastically returned.
“You be good,” she told Molly.
“I’ll be very good,” Molly said with her usual banner headline emphasis, “and get a star.”
“Well, that would be great,” Liz said. “But regular good is also fine. Nobody gets a star every day, kiddo.”
“Bye, Mommy.”
“Bye, baby.”
Molly jog-trotted into the school. In spite of her condition, she never seemed to be content with just walking. Wherever she was going, she made sure she got there fast.
When Liz got back to her car, she found herself boxed in. Someone had parked a big black SUV side-on in front of both disabled spots. Liz waited a while, then finally went off in search of the driver, trying to repress a feeling of exasperation. Her shift at the cinema didn’t start for another three hours, but she had a ton of stuff to do before then, including the week’s grocery shopping.
Mrs. Hannah at reception did everything she could, which was basically to give a shout-out over the PA system to the car’s owner, asking for them to come back and move it. Liz thanked her and went back outside.
The car was still there. Two women were standing next to it, talking in a very relaxed way as though they were there for the long haul. Liz walked up to them.