Pieces of Her

  Laura wrenched the knife away from his grip even as the long blade was still sticking out of her hand.

  He stumbled back.

  He looked at the knife jutting out of her hand.

  One second.

  Two seconds.

  Three.

  He seemed to remember the gun on his hip. His right hand reached down. His fingers wrapped around the handle. The silver flashed on the muzzle. His left hand swung around to cup the weapon as he prepared to fire the last bullet into her mother’s heart.

  Silently, Laura swung her arm, backhanding the blade into the side of his neck.

  Crunch, like a butcher cutting a side of beef.

  The sound had an echo that bounced off the corners of the room.

  The man gasped. His mouth fished open. His eyes widened.

  The back of Laura’s hand was still pinned to his neck, caught between the handle and the blade.

  Andy saw her fingers move.

  There was a clicking sound. The gun shaking as he tried to raise it.

  Laura spoke, more growl than words.

  He kept lifting the gun. Tried to aim.

  Laura raked the blade out through the front of his throat.

  Blood, sinew, cartilage.

  No spray or mist like before. Everything gushed out of his open neck like a dam breaking open.

  His black shirt turned blacker. The pearl buttons showed different shades of pink.

  The gun dropped first.

  Then his knees hit the floor. Then his chest. Then his head.

  Andy watched his eyes as he fell.

  He was dead before he hit the ground.

  2

  When Andy was in the ninth grade, she’d had a crush on a boy named Cletus Laraby, who went by Cleet, but in an ironic way. He had floppy brown hair and he knew how to play the guitar and he was the smartest guy in their chemistry class, so Andy tried to learn how to play the guitar and pretended to be interested in chemistry, too.

  This was how she ended up entering the school’s science fair: Cleet signed up, so Andy did, too.

  She had never spoken a word to him in her life.

  No one questioned the wisdom of giving a drama club kid who barely passed earth sciences access to ammonium nitrate and ignition switches, but in retrospect, Dr. Finney was probably so pleased Andy was interested in something other than mime arts that she had looked the other way.

  Andy’s father, too, was elated by the news. Gordon took Andy to the library where they checked out books on engineering and rocket design. He filled out a form for a loyalty card from the local hobby shop. Over the dinner table, he would read aloud from pamphlets from the American Association for Rocketry.

  Whenever Andy was staying at her dad’s house, Gordon worked in the garage with his sanding blocks, shaping the fins and nose cone shoulders, while Andy sat at his workbench and sketched out designs for the tube.

  Andy knew that Cleet liked the Goo Goo Dolls because he had a sticker on his backpack, so she started out thinking the tube of the rocket would look like a steampunk telescope from the video for “Iris,” then she thought about putting wings on it because “Iris” was from the movie City of Angels, then she decided that she would put Nicolas Cage’s face on the side, in profile, because he was the angel in the movie, then she decided that she should paint Meg Ryan instead because this was for Cleet and he would probably think that Meg Ryan was a lot more interesting than Nicolas Cage.

  A week before the fair, Andy had to turn in all of her notes and photographs to Dr. Finney to prove that she had actually done all of the work herself. She was laying out the dubious evidence on the teacher’s desk when Cleet Laraby walked in. Andy had to clasp together her hands to keep them from trembling when Cleet stopped to look at the photos.

  “Meg Ryan,” Cleet said. “I dig it. Blow up the bitch, right?”

  Andy felt a cold slice of air cut open her lips.

  “My girlfriend loves that stupid movie. The one with the angels?” Cleet showed her the sticker on his backpack. “They wrote that shitty song for the soundtrack, man. That’s why I keep this here, to remind me never to sell out my art like those faggots.”

  Andy didn’t move. She couldn’t speak.

  Girlfriend. Stupid. Shitty. Man. Faggots.

  Andy had left Dr. Finney’s classroom without her notes or her books or even her purse. She’d walked through the cafeteria, then out the exit door that was always propped open so the lunch ladies could smoke cigarettes behind the Dumpster.

  Gordon lived two miles away from the school. It was June. In Georgia. On the coast. By the time she reached his house, Andy was badly sunburned and soaked in her own sweat and tears. She took the Meg Ryan rocket and the two Nicolas Cage test rockets and threw them in the outdoor trash can. Then she soaked them with lighter fluid. Then she threw a match into the can. Then she woke up on her back in Gordon’s driveway because a neighbor was squirting her down with the garden hose.

  The whoosh of fire had singed off Andy’s eyebrows, eyelashes, bangs and nose hairs. The sound of the explosion was so intense that Andy’s ears had started to bleed. The neighbor started screaming in her face. His wife, a nurse, came over and was clearly trying to tell Andy something, but the only thing she could hear was a sharp tone, like when her chorus teacher blew a single note on her pitch pipe—

  Eeeeeeeeeeee . . .

  Andy heard The Sound, and nothing but The Sound, for four whole days.

  Waking. Trying to sleep. Bathing. Walking to the kitchen. Sitting in front of the television. Reading notes her mother and father furiously scratched out on a dry erase board.

  We don’t know what’s wrong.

  Probably temporary.

  Don’t cry.

  Eeeeeeeeeeee . . .

  That had been almost twenty years ago. Andy hadn’t thought much about the explosion until now, and that was only because The Sound was back. When it returned, or when she became aware of the return, she was standing in the diner by her mother, who was seated in a chair. There were three dead people on the floor. On the ground. The murderer, his black shirt even blacker. Shelly Barnard, her red shirt even redder. Betsy Barnard, the bottom part of her face hanging by strands of muscle and sinew.

  Andy had looked up from the bodies. People were standing outside the restaurant. Mall shoppers with Abercrombie and Juicy bags and Starbucks coffees and Icees. Some of them had been crying. Some of them had been taking pictures.

  Andy had felt pressure on her arm. Laura was struggling to turn the chair away from the gawkers. Every movement had a stuttering motion to Andy’s eye, like she was watching a stop-action movie. Laura’s hand shook as she tried to wrap a tablecloth around her bleeding leg. The white thing sticking out was not a bone but a shard of broken china. Laura was right-handed, but the knife jutting from her left hand made wrapping her leg impossible. She was talking to Andy, likely asking for help, but all Andy could hear was The Sound.

  “Andy,” Laura had said.

  Eeeeeeeeeeee . . .

  “Andrea.”

  Andy stared at her mother’s mouth, wondering if she was hearing the word or reading the word on her lips—so familiar that her brain processed it as heard rather than seen.

  “Andy,” Laura repeated. “Help me.”

  That had come through, a muffled request like her mother was speaking through a long tube.

  “Andy,” Laura had grabbed both of Andy’s hands in her own. Her mother was bent over in the chair, obviously in pain. Andy had knelt down. She’d started knotting the tablecloth.

  Tie it tight—

  That’s what Andy would have said to a panicked caller on the dispatch line: Don’t worry about hurting her. Tie the cloth as tight as you can to stop the bleeding.

  It was different when your hands were the ones tying the cloth. Different when the pain you saw was registered on your own mother’s face.

  “Andy.” Laura had waited for her to look up.

  Andy’s eyes had troubl
e focusing. She wanted to pay attention. She needed to pay attention.

  Her mother had grabbed Andy by the chin, given her a hard shake to knock her out of her stupor.

  She had said, “Don’t talk to the police. Don’t sign a statement. Tell them you can’t remember anything.”

  What?

  “Promise me,” Laura had insisted. “Don’t talk to the police.”

  Four hours later, Andy still hadn’t talked to the police, but that was more because the police had not talked to her. Not at the diner, not in the ambulance and not now.

  Andy was waiting outside the closed doors to the surgical suite while the doctors operated on Laura. She was slumped in a hard plastic chair. She had refused to lie down, refused to take the nurse up on the offer of a bed, because nothing was wrong with her. Laura needed the help. And Shelly. And Shelly’s mother, whose name Andy could not now remember.

  Who was Mrs. Barnard, really, if not a mother to her child?

  Andy sat back in the chair. She had to turn a certain way to keep the bruise on her head from throbbing. The plate glass window overlooking the boardwalk. Andy remembered her mother tackling her to the ground. The pounding at the back of her head as her skull cracked against the window. The spiderwebbing glass. The way Laura quickly scrambled to stand. The way she had looked and sounded so calm.

  The way she had held up her fingers—four on the left hand, one on the right—as she explained to the shooter that he only had one bullet left out of the six he had started with.

  Andy rubbed her face with her hands. She did not look at the clock, because looking up at the clock every time she wanted to would make the hours stretch out interminably. She ran her tongue along her fillings. The metal ones had been drilled out and replaced with composite, but she could still remember how The Sound had made them almost vibrate inside her molars. Into her jaw. Up into her skull. A vise-like noise that made her brain feel as if it was going to implode.

  Eeeeeeeeeeee . . .

  Andy squeezed her eyes shut. Immediately, the images started scrolling like one of Gordon’s vacation slide shows.

  Laura holding up her hand.

  The long blade slicing into her palm.

  Wrenching the knife away.

  Backhanding the blade into the man’s neck.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  Jonah Helsinger. That was the murderer’s name. Andy knew it—she wasn’t sure how. Was it on the dispatch radio when she rode in the ambulance with her mother? Was it on the news blaring from the TV when Andy was led into the triage waiting room? Was it on the nurses’ lips as they led her up to the surgical wing?

  “Jonah Helsinger,” someone had whispered, the way you’d whisper that someone had cancer. “The killer’s name is Jonah Helsinger.”

  “Ma’am?” A Savannah police officer was standing in front of Andy.

  “I don’t—” Andy tried to recall what her mother had told her to say. “I can’t remember.”

  “Ma’am,” the officer repeated, which was weird because she was older than Andy. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a man. He says he’s your father, but—”

  Andy looked up the hall.

  Gordon was standing by the elevators.

  She was up and running before she could think about it. Gordon met her halfway, grabbing her in a bear hug, holding her so close that she could feel his heart pounding in his chest. She pressed her face into his starched white shirt. He had been at work, dressed in his usual three-piece suit. His reading glasses were still on top of his head. His Montblanc pen was tucked into his shirt pocket. The metal was cold against the tip of her ear.

  Andy had been losing her shit in little pieces since the shooting began, but in her father’s arms, finally safe, she completely lost it. She started to cry so hard that she couldn’t support her own weight. Gordon half lifted, half dragged her to a set of chairs against the wall. He held onto her so tightly that she had to take shallow breaths to breathe.

  “I’m here,” he told her, again and again. “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

  “Daddy,” she said, the word coming out around a sob.

  “It’s okay.” Gordon stroked back her hair. “You’re safe now. Everybody’s safe.”

  Andy kept crying. She cried so long that she began to feel self-conscious, like it was too much. Laura was alive. Bad things had happened, but Laura was going to be okay. Andy was going to be okay. She had to be okay.

  “It’s okay,” Gordon murmured. “Just let it all out.”

  Andy sniffed back her tears. She tried to regain her composure. And tried. Every time she thought she might be all right, she remembered another detail—the sound of the first gunshot, like a jar popping open, the thwack as her mother lodged the knife into flesh and bone—and the tears started to fall again.

  “It’s all right,” Gordon said, patiently stroking her head. “Everybody’s okay, sweetheart.”

  Andy wiped her nose. She took a shaky breath. Gordon leaned up in the chair, still holding onto her, and pulled out his handkerchief.

  Andy blotted away her tears, blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” Gordon pushed her hair back out of her eyes. “Were you hurt?”

  She shook her head. Blew her nose again until her ears popped.

  The Sound was gone.

  She closed her eyes, relief taking hold.

  “All right?” Gordon asked. His hand was warm against her back. She felt anchored again. “You okay?”

  Andy opened her eyes. Her nerves still felt raw, but she had to tell her father what had happened. “Mom—she had a knife, and this guy, she mur—”

  “Shhh,” he hushed, pressing his fingers to her lips. “Mom’s okay. We’re all okay.”

  “But—”

  He put his finger back to her lips to keep her quiet. “I talked to the doctor. Mom’s in recovery. Her hand is going to be fine. Her leg is fine. It’s all fine.” He raised an eyebrow, tilted his head slightly to the right where the cop was standing. The woman was on the phone, but she was clearly listening.

  Gordon asked Andy, “You sure you’re okay? Did they check you out?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re just tired, baby. You were up all night working. You saw something horrible happen. Your life was in danger. Your mother’s life was in danger. It’s understandable you’re in shock. You need some rest, give your memories some time to piece themselves together.” His tone was measured. Andy realized that Gordon was coaching her. “All right?”

  She nodded because he was nodding. Why was he telling her what to say? Had he talked to Laura? Was her mother in trouble?

  She had killed a man. Of course she was in trouble.

  The police officer said, “Ma’am, do you mind giving me some basic information? Full name, address, birthdate, that kind of thing.”

  “I’ll provide that, Officer.” Gordon waited for the woman to pull out her pen and notebook before he complied.

  Andy tucked herself back underneath his protective arm. She swallowed so hard that her throat clicked.

  And then she made herself look at the situation as a human being out in the world rather than a terrified spectator.

  This wasn’t one drug dealer shooting another drug dealer in the streets, or an abusive spouse finally crossing the last line. A white kid had shot two white women, then was killed by another white woman, in one of the most affluent malls in the state.

  News trucks would probably come down from Atlanta and Charleston. Lawyers would intervene for the families, the victims, the mall management, the city, the county, maybe even the feds. An array of police forces would descend: Belle Isle, Savannah, Chatham County, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Witness statements. Forensics. Photographs. Autopsies. Evidence collection.

  Part of Andy’s job in radio dispatch was to assign case numbers for crimes on a far smaller scale, and she often tracked their progress over the months, sometimes year
s, it took for a case to go to trial. She of all people should have known that her mother’s actions would be scrutinized at every single level of the criminal justice system.

  As if on cue, there was a loud ding from the elevator. The cop’s leather gunbelt made a squeaking noise as she adjusted it on her hips. The doors slid open. A man and a woman walked into the hallway. Both in wrinkled suits. Both with tired looks on their faces. The guy was bald and bloated with patches of peeling sunburn on his nose. The woman was around Andy’s height, at least ten years older, with olive skin and dark hair.

  Andy started to stand, but Gordon kept her in the chair.

  “Ms. Oliver.” The woman took out her badge and showed it to Andy. “I’m Detective Sergeant Lisa Palazzolo. This is Detective Brant Wilkes. We’re with the Savannah Police Department. We’re assisting Belle Isle with the investigation.” She tucked her badge back into her jacket pocket. “We need to talk to you about what happened this morning.”

  Andy’s mouth opened, but again, she couldn’t remember what her mother had told her to say, or what Gordon had coached her to say, so she reverted to her default response which was to close her mouth and stare blankly at the person who had asked the question.

  Gordon said, “This isn’t a good time, Detectives. My daughter is in shock. She’s not yet ready to give her statement.”

  Wilkes huffed a disapproving grunt. “You’re her father?”

  Andy always forgot Gordon was black and she was white until someone else pointed it out to her.

  “Yes, Detective. I’m her father.” Gordon’s tone was patient. He was used to this. Over the years, he’d smoothed the nerves of anxious teachers, concerned store clerks, and aggressively racist store security. “I’m Gordon Oliver, Laura’s ex-husband. Andrea’s adoptive father.”

  Wilkes twisted his mouth to the side as he silently scrutinized the story.

  Palazzolo said, “We’re real sorry about what happened, Mr. Oliver, but we need to ask Andrea some questions.”

  Gordon repeated, “As I said, she isn’t prepared at the moment to discuss the incident.” He crossed his legs, casual, as if this was all a formality. “Andrea is a dispatch operator, which I’m sure you can tell from her uniform. She worked a night shift. She’s bone-tired. She witnessed a terrible tragedy. She’s not in any shape to give a statement.”