The Rules of Survival

  “They gave me back my own clothes,” Nikki said, as if she could read my mind. “But they didn’t bother to wash them. Are you offended, Matt?”

  She stood directly in front of me and looked up at me, and I realized with a jolt that I was taller than her now. When had that happened? And her hair—it was short. It was cut in a tight, unattractive cap on her head. I could see gray in it. I studied her face. There were new grooves running deeply across her forehead, matching the graying hair.

  She’s getting old, I thought, amazed.

  “What?” Nikki said mockingly. “No hug?”

  I don’t know what came over me. The habit of obedience? I reached out, even as my throat closed up at the smell of her. I put my arms around Nikki and I hugged her, tight. One second. Two.

  She was rigid in my arms. Then she pushed at me, her hands worming their way in front of my shoulders so she could shove me away harder. I let her. I stepped back.

  She was grinning now. It sent a chill through me. And all at once it didn’t matter that I was taller than her, that she was showing her age—or even that all-important thing, that we were escaping her. Fear of her closed in on me again. Maybe Murdoch and Ben and Bobbie were all wrong about our being safe. She was back now. Who knew what she’d do?

  My old pattern of trying to pacify her was still in control of me. “We didn’t think you’d be home until later,” I said.

  She curled her lip. “Like you care.”

  “Well,” I said. “I have homework to do.”

  I turned to go.

  And Nikki attacked. She threw herself at my back, hanging on me with one arm while she clawed at my face with the other. Pain ripped through my cheek. Her weight was heavy on my back. I felt one of her legs twist up as she tried to kick me in the groin with her heel.

  She did all this in complete silence.

  I was the one who yelled. I bucked, trying to throw her off my back, trying to get a grip on her wrists, trying to turn my face, to at least shield my eyes from her nails. For a few weird moments, though, I didn’t use all my strength against her. All those muscles I’d worked so hard to develop at the gym were momentarily useless. Later on, I realized that I’d been trying not to hurt her.

  Then some survival force in me took over. I reached up and grabbed her arms, and managed to duck. To my surprise, she flipped over my head and landed with a thump on her back on the carpet in front of me.

  I was amazed and shocked at what I had just done. I wasn’t just taller than Nikki now. I was stronger.

  And yet, it didn’t matter. Fear pulsed in me still.

  On the carpet, Nikki began to roll over. She was clearly unhurt. I didn’t wait. I jumped right over her and ran as fast as I could, down the hall, through the door, down the stairs to Aunt Bobbie’s. I was almost at Aunt Bobbie’s door when Nikki broke her silence.

  She screamed obscenities. All of them were about me. But at least she didn’t follow me down the stairs.

  I entered Aunt Bobbie’s at breakneck speed, whirled around, and slammed the door shut after me. An instant later, I had thrown the dead bolt home.

  I stood for a minute on the other side of the door. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. There didn’t seem to be enough air to breathe. I had to put a hand on the door to keep myself upright.

  She kept up the screams for ten minutes or more.

  Finally, she stopped. Only then did I become aware of the throbbing pain in my face. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Three deep, bleeding gouges ran from the corner of my right eye nearly to my mouth.

  45

  WAR ZONE

  Over the next few weeks, Nikki quickly showed her dedication to making the house totally uninhabitable.

  You could count on her screaming or playing music loudly at two or three in the morning. At any time of the day or night, there might be a bout of thudding and smashing that made Aunt Bobbie moan helplessly.

  There was a constant stream of late-night visitors. They were mostly men, mostly drunk or high, they always came in at least twos or threes, and they’d party above our heads until the police came. It wasn’t just us calling the police. It was the college boys who rented the first floor, and the neighbors on both sides and across the street.

  One soft spring evening, one of the kitchen chairs crashed out of the front bay window of Nikki’s apartment. It landed in the street in pieces, narrowly missing a neighbor’s Honda Civic. I had to go out and clean it up while the neighbors gathered to ask me what was going on, to lecture me, or to pity me.

  Nikki didn’t have her window repaired. Instead, she just had some guy cover the broken glass with wooden planks. The planks had a few four-letter words on them in phosphorescent orange spray paint, facing the street. The neighbors were not happy about this, either. Aunt Bobbie took to scurrying between the house and her car with her head bowed and her hand hovering before her face, as if that would make her unrecognizable.

  The college boys moved out of the first floor on two days’ notice. Without a word about the lease terms, Aunt Bobbie wrote them a check to return their security deposit. She called the Realtor about finding new tenants, but Southie is a small, tight community, and the Realtor knew what was going on. She claimed that she would only be able to rent the apartment at a huge discount. Aunt Bobbie said that was unacceptable and slammed down the phone, only to call back an hour later and agree. Not that it mattered. Nikki slipped into the downstairs apartment the moment it was empty and did some work on the walls, ceiling, and floors with her spray paints. Then, for good measure, she did the public hallway, stairs, and front door. Nobody was going to want to rent that apartment.

  The door of our second-floor apartment wasn’t overlooked, either. It said, in a plain white that showed up beautifully on top of the oak wood: FAT COW + DICKLESS LITTLE BOY. She had started out writing too big and had to downsize her letters to include the part about me.

  In the middle of this war zone, however, I was counting my blessings.

  I was grateful that I had stayed behind, so Aunt Bobbie wasn’t going through this alone.

  I was grateful that you and Callie were safe with Ben in Arlington—and that the lawyer had persuaded the judge, a month ago, that Nikki didn’t need to know her daughters’ exact address until she’d at least gone through some weeks of probation. It was incredible foresight.

  I was grateful to Murdoch, who kept in touch several times a day, even though he was having his own problems with Nikki. His front door, too, had gotten the phosphorescent treatment, and in her spare time, Nikki had taken up stalking him again.

  “Don’t worry about it, Matt,” said Murdoch, when I tried to apologize to him. “It’s not your fault, and anyway, I can cope. Try to look at it this way: You and I and Bobbie are keeping her plenty busy here in Southie. The more we do that, the less time and energy she has for hunting down the girls and causing trouble for them. Because let’s not forget that she could probably find them if she really tried.”

  “I guess that’s true,” I said. I mentioned it to Aunt Bobbie that night—just as Nikki led three or four people loudly up the stairs—and she nodded grimly.

  “I’ve thought of that,” she said. “It keeps me going. That and you.” That made me grateful to her all over again.

  I was filled with open hate for Nikki now. I daydreamed about picking her up and sending her flying, headfirst, through the glass and boards of her own front window, to land in a pile of broken bones and bleeding flesh on the street below.

  I thought, too—and not just because it was Murdoch’s opinion—that this phase could not last forever. Nikki was disintegrating in front of our eyes, careening out of control. She was a half inch from landing in jail again, as soon as she did something a little more serious than disorderly conduct and vandalism of property. She might well self-destruct. It would happen soon. Soon.

  46

  TANTRUM

  Meanwhile, at the new apartment in Arlington, things had not go
ne perfectly, and it was all about you, Emmy.

  I remember one particular Friday in late September. It was my day to pick you up from school. I had insisted on taking my turn, even though it took me over an hour to get to Arlington from Southie by subway and bus, even though it meant I had to duck out of school early myself. I was only missing a study hall on Fridays, I argued, and it was important to me to do this.

  So, I showed up at the your elementary school at two o’clock and waited just inside the front door. The final bell of the day rang, and streams and streams of little kids went past me, and finally one of them was you, with your lower lip sticking out and a mutinous set to your shoulders. You took one look at me and you just exploded.

  It was a classic tantrum, involving kicking and punching (at me), screaming, sobbing, and then the heaving of your entire body at full length on the ground. At first, I tried to hold you, tried to say things to calm you down, but along with the kicking and punching, you spat in my face. Finally, I stood a few feet away and just waited. People stared at us as they passed.

  You were able to keep up a tantrum for a long time. I was reminded powerfully of Nikki. Maybe that made me more short-tempered than I could have been. Anyway, after a couple more minutes, I had had it with you. I lifted you by the upper arms and held you aloft while you kicked me in the legs. I didn’t even feel it. “You stop this, Emmy,” I said into your dirt-smeared face and open, yelling mouth. “You are a member of this family and you will start behaving like it. That means doing what you’re supposed to do every day, like a little soldier. We can’t cut you any slack anymore. Do you understand me, you spoiled little brat? It’s time to grow up. It’s time to act like Callie does, and like I do. It’s time to do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it. And that means that right now, you’re going home.”

  I’m not sure how you could hear me over the sound of your own yelling, but I knew you had. I continued to hold you suspended in midair by the upper arms, and you continued screaming and kicking for another full minute while you stared right back at me. Then you stopped, all at once.

  “That’s not my home!” you said. “That apartment.”

  “It is now,” I said.

  “You don’t have to live there! You got to stay at home!”

  “Tough,” I said.

  “Ben hates me,” you said.

  That was maybe where I should have had a little more sympathy, but I didn’t feel it. “Well,” I said, “I guess you haven’t been too nice to him. What do you expect? That’s what I mean about you needing to grow up, Emmy. And act like a soldier. Or do you want to go back to Nikki, huh? Is that what you want?”

  Your eyes told me you hated me. “Maybe I do,” you said.

  I dropped you. You landed splat on the ground again, hard. You screamed.

  I grabbed you again and hauled you away. “You know Ben’s better than Nikki,” I said grimly. You screamed all the way back to the apartment, where I dumped you on Callie and just left, fuming.

  And then, of course, came the next Friday. Again my turn to pick you up from school. But I was a little late, and you weren’t there.

  47

  MY FAULT

  I think now that Nikki was stalling, in Southie, with her spray paint and her systematic trashing of the house, while she figured out how to get to you. It was always going to be you. Of the three of us, you were the one who was most her property. You were her baby.

  How did Nikki find you? I don’t know for sure. Maybe she called your old school and asked—in her professional, bureaucratic receptionist voice—about the transfer of records. It doesn’t really matter now. All we really know is that she showed up at your new school, before I got there, and took you away.

  Apparently, from what other kids at school said, you did not yell or scream or fight or throw a tantrum. You just got into Nikki’s car with her.

  My fault. I knew it. I knew it was because of the harsh way I’d spoken to you last time I picked you up at school.

  I should have known.

  After I realized you were missing, I called Bobbie and Ben and Murdoch. And of course we called the police. Everything was done that could be done. An Amber Alert sent out with your description and photo. A warrant issued for Nikki’s arrest on kidnapping charges. But the first twenty-four hours crawled by, and we heard nothing. And then it was two days. And then three, and I thought I would go mad.

  I had a conversation with the South Boston cop Officer Brooks. “The longer she’s gone, the less likely it is that we’ll find her, isn’t that true?” I demanded.

  “Not at all,” he said. “We’ll get her. Anyway, you don’t really think she’d hurt your sister, do you? She’ll be okay in the meantime.”

  I remembered Nikki dangling you over the rocks in Gloucester. I remembered being in the rental Jeep the night she almost drove us all into oncoming traffic. I remembered the time she took you off with that man Rob. And also, frankly, I remembered the kind of tantrums you were throwing.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know she would.” I outstared him.

  “We’ll do everything we can,” he said. “We’ll get her.”

  “Right,” I said. But I didn’t believe him.

  I called Murdoch. I outlined again each and every thing I’d done on the day you’d been taken, all the reasons I was ten minutes late. He listened. I knew that he, like me, like Aunt Bobbie and Callie and Ben, had gotten very little sleep in the last few days. I also knew that he and Ben had been checking bars and other places Nikki went, trying to find her or someone who knew where she was. But they still didn’t have a single clue.

  And in my heart, I blamed them. No. I didn’t blame Ben, really. My old feelings about him had resurfaced. Useless, useless. But I blamed Murdoch. He had not, after all, kept you safe.

  I spent Sunday night walking the streets of Southie. I looked for Nikki, and I looked for you, the way I had once looked for Murdoch, and with the same results.

  Empty, finally, I went “home.”

  The house now looked as if it had been occupied by the neighborhood crack dealers. Even after I passed through the FAT COW + DICKLESS LITTLE BOY door into Bobbie’s apartment, I was still aware of the wreckage around us.

  I went into the living room and found Aunt Bobbie dozing in front of the TV. There was an almost empty bottle of red wine on the coffee table in front of her. At my entrance, she struggled to wake. “Matthew, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She gestured at the TV, which was tuned to the Home and Garden channel. A perky couple was viewing a possible new home with a Realtor. “As God is my witness,” Aunt Bobbie said, “I want to be them. I’ve been thinking, Matt. When this is over, when we have Emmy back safe, I want to leave this neighborhood and never, ever come back.”

  “I understand,” I said. I eyed the bottle of wine.

  “Sorry,” said Aunt Bobbie, who could track well enough to follow my eyes. “You know I don’t drink much, but tonight, I needed a little something.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “You’ll come, too, right?” she continued. “When I leave this neighborhood, you’ll come? I like having you around, Matt.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” At that moment, though, it hardly mattered to me.

  “Good,” said Aunt Bobbie. Then she bit her lip, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  Maybe I should have sat next to her and hugged her or something. “Go to bed,” I said. That was all I could manage. I felt a sort of muted amazement when she obeyed me, clicking off the TV and stumbling into her room.

  I went into my room, which had seemed so wonderful to me such a short time ago. I closed its door, and let my futon mattress practically hit me in the face as I collapsed onto it. I didn’t bother to get undressed or to kick off my shoes. I simply shut my eyes and let my mind chase itself down one dark corridor after another. I knew I wouldn’t sleep.

  48

  UNKNOWN NUMBER
r />   I was awakened—sharply and completely, and hours later—by the insistent vibration of the cell phone in my jeans pocket.

  Instantly, I rolled over and sat up. I fumbled the phone out of my pocket, nearly dropping it in my haste. The phone display said: Unknown number. I flipped the phone open. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Hello, Matt?” A high, tremulous voice. It was you.

  “Emmy!” I said. In the darkness, my eyes managed to fasten on the glowing numbers of my bedside clock. 2:56 A.M. I tried to gather myself together. To think clearly. “Emmy, where are you? Are you all right? Is Nikki there?”

  For a moment I only heard breathing. Then you said, “I’m sick.” You hiccupped.

  “What? How are you sick?”

  “I just threw up!” you wailed. “It’s all over me and the floor.”

  “Where are you?” I said tensely.

  “I don’t know. It’s a trailer. I’m all alone here.”

  “Nikki—Mom isn’t with you?”

  “She was but she left. I was sleeping but then I woke up and I’m sick.” There was a gagging noise. “Matt? Can you come get me?”

  I clutched the phone. “Yes,” I said. “But I need you to tell me better where you are. Did you get there by car or bus or—Emmy, how did you and Mom get where you are?”

  “In Mom’s car.”

  “Did it take long?”

  “No. I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

  I racked my brains. “You say you’re in a trailer? Is there a window? Or a door? Can you look outside and tell me what you see?”

  “All right,” you said. And then, oddly formal, you added: “Please hold.”