A Drink Before the War

  And then there was Roland—taking all that hate and ugliness and depravity that had been shoved into him since childhood at every turn, and spinning around and spewing it back at the world. Waging war against his father and telling himself that once it was done, he’d be at peace. But he wouldn’t. It never works that way. Once that ugliness has been forced into you, it becomes part of your blood, dilutes it, races through your heart and back out again, staining everything as it goes. The ugliness never goes away, never comes out, no matter what you do. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. All you can hope to do is control it, to force it all into one tight ball in one tight place and keep it there, a constant weight.

  I reached the belfry—still less risky than my apartment—and went inside. I sat at my desk, drank my beer. The sky was empty now, the celebration ended. The Fourth would be the fifth soon and the migration back from the Cape and the Vineyard had probably already begun. The day after a holiday is like the day after your birthday—everything seems old, like tarnished copper.

  I placed my feet up on the desk and leaned back in the chair. My arm still burned and I straightened it out in front of me and poured half a beer on it. Homemade anesthesia. The cut was wide but shallow. In a few months the scar tissue would pale from a dull red to a duller white. It would barely be noticeable.

  I raised my shirt, looked at the jellyfish on my abdomen, the scar that would never fade, never be mistaken for anything innocuous, for anything but what it was: a mark of violence and depraved indifference, a cattle brand. The Hero’s legacy, his stamp on this world, his attempt at immortality. As long as I was alive, carrying this jellyfish on my stomach, then so was he.

  When I was growing up, my father’s fear of flame burgeoned in direct proportion to his success in fighting it. By the time he reached the rank of lieutenant, he’d turned our apartment into a battle zone against fire. Our refrigerator contained not one, but three boxes of baking soda. Two more in the cupboard below the sink, one above the oven. There were no electric blankets in my father’s home, no faulty appliances. The toaster was serviced twice a year. Every clock was mechanical. Electrical cords were checked twice a month for cracks in the rubber; sockets were investigated every six weeks. By the time I was ten, my father pulled all plugs from the sockets nightly to minimize any stray currents of malevolent electricity.

  When I was eleven, I found my father sitting at the kitchen table late one night, staring at a candle he’d placed before him. He was holding his hand over the flame, patting it occasionally, his dark eyes fixed on the ropes of blue and yellow as if they could tell him something. When he saw me, his eyes widened, his face flushed, and he said, “It can be contained. It can,” and I was stunned to hear the thinnest chords of uncertainty in the deep timbre of his voice.

  Because my father’s shift began at three in the afternoon and my mother worked nights as a cashier at Stop and Shop, my sister, Erin, and I were latchkey kids long before the term became fashionable. One night, we tried to cook blackened redfish, something we’d had during a trip to Cape Cod the previous summer.

  We poured every spice we could find into the skillet, and within minutes, the kitchen had filled with smoke. I opened the windows while my sister unlatched the front and back doors. By the time we remembered what caused the smoke in the first place, the pan had caught fire.

  I reached the oven just as the first fat parachute of blue flame floated into a white curtain. I remembered the fear in my father’s voice. “It can be contained.” Erin picked the pan up off the burner and brown grease splattered her arm. She dropped the pan, and the contents spread across the top of the oven like napalm.

  I thought of my father’s reaction when he discovered we’d allowed it into his home, the embarrassment he’d feel, the rage that his embarrassment would turn into, thickening the blood in his hands until they turned to fists and came looking for me.

  I panicked.

  With six cartons of baking soda in reach, I grabbed the first liquid I saw off the top of the fridge and poured a half-pint of eighty proof vodka into the middle of a grease fire.

  A tenth of a second after, I realized what was going to happen and I tackled my sister just before the top half of the room exploded. We lay on the floor and watched in awe as the wallpaper above the oven stripped away from the wall, as a cloud of blue, yellow, black, and red mushroomed across the ceiling, as a hundred fireflies erupted into the side of the fridge.

  My sister rolled away and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hall. I got one from the pantry, and as if the last five minutes hadn’t happened, as if we were truly the children of an illustrious firefighter, we stood in the center of the kitchen and doused the oven, the wall, the ceiling, the fridge, and the curtain. Within a minute, black-and-white foam covered our bodies like birdshit.

  Once our adrenal glands had closed their floodgates and our shakes had stopped, we sat down in the center of our ruined kitchen, and stared at the front door where my father entered every night at eleven-thirty. We stared at it until we both wept, kept staring long after we’d run out of tears.

  By the time my mother returned from work, we’d fanned all the smoke out of the apartment, wiped all scorch marks off the fridge and oven, and thrown away the charred strips of wallpaper and what remained of the curtain. My mother looked at the black cloud burned into her ceiling, at the scorched wall, and sat down at the kitchen table and stared blankly at something in the pantry for a full five minutes.

  Erin said, “Mum?”

  My mother blinked. She looked at my sister, then at me, then at the vodka bottle on the counter. She tilted her head toward it and looked at us. “Which of you…?”

  I couldn’t speak, pointed a finger at my chest.

  My mother walked into the pantry. For a small, thin woman, she moved as if she were overweight, with slow lumbering steps. She returned with the iron and ironing board, placed them in the center of the kitchen. In times of crisis, my mother always clung to routine, and it was time to iron my father’s uniforms. She opened the window and began pulling them from the clothesline. With her back to us, she said, “Go to your rooms. I’ll see if I can talk to your father.”

  I sat on the corner of my bed, hands in my lap, facing the door. I left the lights off, closed my eyes in the darkness, my hands clasped tight.

  When my father came home, his usual thumping about the kitchen—tossing his lunch box on the table, rattling ice cubes in a glass, falling heavily into a chair before pouring his drink—was mute. The silence in the apartment that night was longer and thicker and more pregnant with dread than I have ever experienced since.

  My mother said, “A mistake, that’s all.”

  “A mistake,” my father said.

  “Edgar,” my mother said.

  “A mistake,” my father said again.

  “He’s eleven. He panicked.”

  “Uh-huh,” my father said.

  Everything else that happened seemed to unfold in that weird compression of time that people experience just before they get in a car wreck or fall down a flight of stairs—everything speeds up and everything slows down. A lifetime passes, in all its minute detail, in the space of a second.

  My mother screamed, “No!” and I heard the ironing board topple to the kitchen linoleum, and my father’s footsteps hammered the floorboards toward my room. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but when he kicked the door in, a splinter grazed my cheekbone, and the first thing I saw was the iron in my father’s hand, the electrical cord and plug missing. His knee hit my shoulder and knocked me back on the bed and he said, “You’re so desperate to find out what it feels like, boy?”

  I looked in his eyes because I didn’t want to look at the iron, and what I saw in those dark pupils was an unnerving mixture of anger and fear and hatred and savagery and yes, love, some bastardized version of that too.

  And that’s what I fixated on, clung to, prayed to, as my father ripped my shirt up to my sternum and pressed the iron against my
stomach.

  Angie once said, “Maybe that’s what love is—counting the bandages until someone says, ‘Enough.’”

  Maybe so.

  Sitting at my desk, I closed my eyes, knowing I’d never sleep with the adrenaline doing its stock-car derby in my blood, and when I woke up an hour later, my phone was ringing.

  I managed to say, “Patr—” before Angie’s voice tumbled over the line. “Patrick, come over here. Please.”

  I reached for my gun. “What’s the matter?”

  “I think I just got divorced.”

  28

  When I got there, there was a squad car double-parked in front of the house. Directly behind it was Devin’s Camaro. He was standing on the porch with Oscar, talking to another cop, a kid. Too many cops were starting to look like kids to me, I thought, as I climbed the steps.

  They were standing over a huddled lump of flesh by the railing, the young cop giving it smelling salts. It was Phil, and my first thought was, Jesus Christ, she killed him.

  Devin looked at me and raised his eyebrows, a smile the size of Kansas on his face. He said, “We answered the call because we asked that anything at her or your address be rerouted to us.” He looked down at Phil, at the contusions that covered his face like lesions. He looked back at me. “Oh happy day, huh?”

  She was wearing a white shirt over a pair of faded cobalt shorts. There was a red bubble on her lower lip and mascara ran down her face. Her hair was in her eyes as she stepped gingerly out onto the porch in bare feet. She saw me then and came toward me in a rush. I held her and her teeth dug into my shoulder. She was crying softly.

  I said, “What did you do?” trying to keep the happy surprise out of my voice, but probably not succeeding.

  She shook her head and held on tightly.

  Devin was leaning against Oscar, the two of them happier than I’d seen them since they both stopped paying alimony on the same day. Devin said, “Wanna know what she did?”

  Oscar said, “Make him beg.”

  Devin reached into his pocket, giggling. He held a Taser gun up in front of my face. “This is what she did.”

  “Twice,” Oscar said.

  “Twice!” Devin repeated gleefully. “Damn lucky he didn’t have a friggin’ coronary.”

  “Then,” Oscar said, “she laid a beating on him.”

  “Went nuts!” Devin said. “Nuts! Booted him in the head, the ribs, punched the fuck out of him. I mean, look at him!”

  I’d never seen Devin so thrilled.

  I looked. Phil was coming to now, but once he felt all that pain, I’m quite sure he would’ve preferred sleep. Both eyes were almost completely swollen. His lips were black. He had dark bruises over seventy-five percent of his face at least. If what Curtis Moore had done to me had made me look like I’d been in a car accident, Phil looked like he’d been in a plane crash.

  The first thing he said when he came to was, “You’re arresting her, right?”

  Devin said, “Of course, sir. Of course.”

  Angie stepped out of my arms, looked at him.

  Oscar said, “You’re pressing charges, sir?”

  Phil used the railing to get to his feet. He held onto it like it might just up and run away any second. He started to say something, then leaned over the railing and threw up into the yard.

  “Pretty,” Devin said.

  Oscar walked over to Phil, put a hand on his back as he retched some more. Oscar talked to him in a low soft voice, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, as if he was used to carrying on conversations with people who vomited all over their lawns. “See, sir, the reason I ask if you’re going to press charges is ’cause some people don’t like to do that in this sort of situation.”

  Phil spit a few times into the yard, wiped his mouth with his shirt. Always the gentleman. He said, “What do you mean—‘this sort of situation’?”

  “Well,” Oscar said, “this sort of situation.”

  Devin said, “Sort of situation where a tough guy like yourself gets his ass handed to him by a woman couldn’t weigh more than a hundred fifteen pounds soaking wet. Sort of situation that can become real popular conversation in neighborhood bars. You know,” he said, “sort of situation that makes a guy look like a serious pussy.”

  I coughed into my hand.

  Oscar said, “Won’t be so bad, sir. You just go on into court, tell the judge your wife likes to beat you up every now and then, keep you in line. That sort of thing. Ain’t like the judge’ll check to see if you’re wearing a dress or anything.” He patted him on the back again. Not hard enough to send him down the block, but close. He said, “You feeling better now?”

  Phil turned his head, looked at Angie. “Cunt,” he said.

  No one held her back because no one wanted to. She came across the porch in two strides as Oscar stepped out of the way and Phil barely got an arm up before she clocked him in the temple. Then Oscar stepped forward again, pulled her back. She said, “Phillip, I’ll kill you if you ever come near me again.”

  Phil put a hand to his temple and looked on the verge of tears. He said, “You guys saw that.”

  Oscar said, “Saw what?”

  Devin said, “I’d take the lady at her word, Phillip. She has a gun and a permit to use it from what I understand. It’s a miracle you’re still breathing as it is.”

  Oscar let Angie go and she walked back to Devin and me. I thought I saw smoke coming out of her ears for a moment. Oscar said, “You going to press charges or not, Phillip?”

  Phil took a moment to consider it. Thought about the bars he’d be unable to show his face in. Every one in this neighborhood for sure. Thought of the whistles and homosexual jokes that would follow him to the grave, the bras and panties that would show up in his mailbox on a regular basis. He said, “No, I’m not pressing charges.”

  Oscar tapped his cheek with his hand. “That’s real manly of you, Phillip.”

  The young cop came out of the house carrying Angie’s suitcase and set it in front of her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  We heard a sound like a cat lapping at wet food, and when we looked over, we saw that Phil was weeping into his hands.

  Angie gave him a glare of such withering and final scorn that the temperature on the porch must have dropped by ten degrees. She picked up her suitcase and walked to Devin’s car.

  Oscar slapped Phil’s hip and Phil’s face came out of his hands. He looked up into Oscar’s huge face and Oscar said, “Anything happens to her while me and him”—he pointed at Devin—“are alive, I mean anything, like she gets hit by some lightning or her plane crashes or she breaks a nail, anything—and we’re going to come play with you, Phillip. Know what I mean?”

  Phil nodded and then the convulsions returned and he began sobbing again. He hit his fist against the railing and got them under control and his eyes fell on mine.

  I said, “Bubba really misses you, Phil.”

  He began to shake.

  I turned and as I walked down the steps, Devin said, “Hey, Phil, is payback a bitch, or what?”

  Phil turned around and got sick again. We walked down to Devin’s car and I sat in the backseat with Angie. Camaros have just enough legroom in their backseats to make a dwarf comfortable, but tonight I wasn’t complaining. Devin pulled down the street, looked in his rearview at Angie a few times. “No accounting for taste, is there?”

  Oscar looked back at Angie. “Boggles the mind. Absolutely boggles the mind.”

  29

  Devin said, “Socia’s definitely lost the war. He’s been underground for two days, and half his guys have gone over to the Avengers. No one counted on Roland being such a tactician.” He looked back at us. “Marion won’t last the week. Lucky for you, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking, that still leaves Roland.

  “Not for me,” he said. “I lost a hundred bucks in the fucking pool.”

  Oscar said, “Should have bet on Roland.”

 
“Now you tell me.”

  They dropped us off at my apartment. Oscar said, “We’ll have a unit roll the block every fifteen minutes. You’ll be fine.”

  We said good night, walked up to the apartment. There were eight messages on my answering machine but I ignored it. I said, “Coffee or beer?”

  “Coffee,” Angie said.

  I put some in the filter, turned on the Mr. Coffee. I took a beer from the fridge, came back into the living room. She was curled in the corner of the couch, looking smaller than I’d ever seen her. I sat across from her in an armchair and waited. She placed an ashtray on her thigh, lit a cigarette, her hand trembling. She said, “Hell of a Fourth, huh?”

  “Hell of a Fourth,” I agreed.

  She said, “I came home and I was not in good shape.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, I just killed someone for God’s sake.” Her hand trembled so badly the ash dropped off the cigarette onto the couch. She brushed it into the tray. “So, I came in and there he is, bitching at me about the car still being parked down at South Station, about me not coming home last night, asking me—no, telling me—that I was fucking you. And I think to myself, I just got in the door, damn lucky to be alive, blood all over my face, and he can’t think of anything more original to say than ‘You’re fucking Pat Kenzie’? Christ.” She ran a hand up her forehead, pulled the hair back off her face, held it there. “So, I said, ‘Get a life, Phillip,’ or something to that effect and I start walking by him and he goes, ‘Only thing you’ll be able to fuck once I get finished with you, babe, is yourself.’” She took a drag on the cigarette. “Nice, huh? So, he grabs my arm and I get my free hand in my purse and I shoot him with the stun gun. He hits the floor, then he half gets up and I kick him. He’s off balance, goes tumbling back out the door onto the porch. And I hit him with the stun gun again. And I’m staring down at him, and it all went away. I mean everything—every feeling I ever had for him just sort of flushed out of my system and all I saw was this piece of shit who had abused me for twelve years, and I…went a little hoopy.”