An Untamed State (39 page)

“If you’re going to do it, do it,” Victor said, tightly. “We’ve got to get out of here before there’s real trouble.”

“Fuck,” Michael shouted. He shook his head, shoulders slumping as he shoved the gun into his waistband. He brought his fist to TiPierre’s face one more time and stood, slowly. “I can’t. We’ll tell the police or we won’t. I don’t know.”

“By the time we tell the police, this guy will be long gone.”

Michael grabbed Victor’s wrist. “We’re not doing this,” he said. He nodded to the woman and said, “You are with a very bad man. He hurts women.”

She nodded, pulled her child closer as his crying subsided into sorrowful hiccups.

They sat in the car for a long while when they pulled up the long driveway of Sebastien’s house.

Victor turned to Michael. “You could have killed that guy. I thought all you Americans were gun-loving cowboys.”

Finally, Michael said, “I couldn’t kill a man in front of his son. I would have but for the child.”

Victor nodded. “I get it, man. I don’t know if I could have done it, either. We’re not killers.”

The sun was rising and from their vantage point, the city they looked out onto was a beautiful place, fragile and draped in pale blue light. “We’re not killers,” Michael whispered, already hating himself for not pulling the trigger, for not setting down the proper path of vengeance.

And now, Michael couldn’t stop thinking about that night, his weakness. His knuckles had scabbed over and healed but all he thought about was the power he let slip through his fingers. How could he be with Mireille, this woman he didn’t know and couldn’t face or fix, when he was too weak to avenge her? His impotence consumed him. One day passed and then another and another. And then it was a week and then it was two.

He worked, staying at the office later and later, taking advantage of the nanny’s generosity. He knew it and she knew it but neither of them said anything about it.

It was late but Michael didn’t want to go home to his big empty bed and his empty house and terse messages from his mother and silence from his wife. Brett, one of the architects in his firm, appeared in the doorway, grinning.

“A bunch of us are going to a gentleman’s club. You gonna join us?”

Michael shook his head, looked down at his wedding ring, but then he changed his mind. He was a man. He could have a little fun.

The club was loud and dark and the air was thick with the smell of stale cigars, body spray, and boozy breath. On the main stage, a woman gyrated slowly to a hip-hop song Michael once loved but now barely recognized. He couldn’t remember the last time he heard music. He sat with his coworkers in a low-slung leather banquette, and once the waitress started bringing them bottles, he let go all the way. He had whiskey. He had ice. This was all he needed.

On the table stood a beautiful woman, or what could pass as a beautiful woman. She was tall, long blond hair, probably a wig. There was a wide hollow between her breasts, slicked with glitter. Some electronic song was playing now, one he recognized as a song Mireille ran to. No. He was not going to think about his wife, or, rather the woman he remembered as his wife. She was gone. He took another sip of whiskey and grinned up at the stripper, whose knees were now touching his, her hair draped over his face. He couldn’t stop staring at the sharp valley between her breasts, so sparkly.

He had no recollection of how he got home, but when he opened the front door, he found Mona waiting on the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Michael asked, his words slurring. He tripped as he closed the door and fell flat on his ass. “This is not what it looks like.”

Mona rolled her eyes. “This is very common, Michael.”

Michael giggled. “You are just like your sister.”

Mona sighed, stood, and helped Michael to his feet. “She wasn’t kidding when she told me you giggle when you’re drunk.”

Michael nodded solemnly. “What are you doing here?”

“Your nanny called. She is not a slave, you know.” Mona walked Michael into the kitchen and sat him down on a stool at the breakfast bar before handing him a bottle of water. “Look, I’m not going to bullshit with you. Decide if you’re going to step up or not and if you’re not, leave Miri now, while she’s still a mess, so she only has to put herself back together once.”

“This is none of your business,” Michael said.

“You made it my business when you started being an asshole.”

Michael stood, running his fingers through his hair, over and over. “Is the way I’m dealing with my fucked-up, kidnapped wife not good enough for you?”

Mona sighed, then smiled, sadly. “No, Michael, it isn’t. And I’m pretty sure it’s not good enough for you, either.”

He loosened his tie and sat back down. “I failed her, Mona. I let her get kidnapped. And then I almost killed a man. I had his blood on my hands and I held a gun to his head in front of his child but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make things right.”

“Get off the cross, Michael. You didn’t let anything happen,” Mona said as Michael finished his story.

“You don’t understand. We found one of the guys.”

Mona sat down next to her brother-in-law. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Haltingly, Michael told Mona about his excursion with Victor on their last night in Port-au-Prince, about TiPierre and nearly breaking the man’s body with his two hands, about how little he knew about the world and how little he was able to do when his wife needed him most.

“Damn,” Mona said as Michael finished. She laughed lightly. “Trust Victor. That guy sure gets around.” Mona clucked her tongue. “I wish I could have been there to see you giving it to that animal. I’d have joined in. I’m willing to get my hands dirty for the cause.”

Michael choked up. “Victor is the only one who treated me like I mattered the whole entire time. He’s the only one who listened to one goddamned thing I had to say.”

Mona took Michael’s hand. “My sister didn’t marry a man who would kill another man, not for any reason. She married you because you wouldn’t, besides which, the world is full of dangerous men. You can’t kill them all to keep my sister safe.”

Michael clenched his jaw. “I could try.”

“You could,” Mona said, softly. “But you could also try just being there for your wife here, and now. She needs you around more than she needs to be avenged. Besides which, we both know my sister. She’d eventually be pissed you didn’t let her have at the guy herself.”

Michael couldn’t help but smile. “She is fucking impossible.”

“You married her.”

He looked around the kitchen in the home he and his wife had built—the counters, the stainless steel appliances, the dried flowers on the table because a home should always have fresh flowers, she said, and the last grocery list Miri had written, still tacked to the refrigerator with OREO COOKIES in capital letters at the top and bottom. “That I did,” he finally said.

W
hen I closed my eyes, I was no one. I was the woman who forced herself to forget her husband, her child, all the joy she had ever known, who carefully stripped herself of her memories so she could survive. I was no one in a house filled with angry men. I dreamt of the Commander cuffing me to his bed, stretching me apart, digging his elbow into my breastbone, how the pressure of it made me think he would shatter my rib cage. I turned onto my side, held my hand over my heart, tried to strip myself of these darker memories but they could not be stripped. They were not yet old enough to be memories.

A kind voice said my name softly. I turned toward my name, felt a warm weight beside me. I opened my eyes, and saw Michael smiling back at me from the end of the bed, his hand wrapped around my ankle. I gasped and rolled off the other side of the bed, crawled into a corner, pulled my knees to my chest. Michael remained calm. He knelt in front of me, lifted my chin with one finger.

“It’s Michael,” he said.

“You’re here.” I swallowed. “What are you doing here?”

He sat next to me and pulled a big blue velvet box from his pocket. When he opened the box it made a soft popping sound. “I am an asshole but I choose you, every single day. I will do the fighting we need done.”

I looked at the gleaming rings in the soft velvet box, traced them with my fingers. I closed the box, pushed his hand away. “Michael, don’t. No one expects you to stay with me. No one would choose me right now. Don’t insult me by saying what you think you’re supposed to.”

He held my left hand gently. “I choose you today, yesterday, tomorrow. I swear.” He opened the box again and slowly slid a beautiful diamond ring along my finger and then a thin wedding band that matched his. He closed his hand over mine. “I’m here because I have to tell you something. I went to a strip club.”

I lightly punched his arm. I can be pettily jealous and he knows it. My irritation brought me back to myself, at least for a moment. “What the hell, Michael. Seriously?”

Michael threw his hands up. “Hear me out.”

I punched him again.

“I was in a not good place and I don’t know, I wanted to do something stupid. Anyway, I was there with some guys from work and it was fine, whatever, but the girl who kept dancing at our table, she had glitter between her boobs. It was crazy. And all I could think was, ‘Miri would love to see this sparkle.’”

“If you think about your wife at a strip club, you are doing it wrong.”

“That’s my point. I was surrounded by all these incredibly beautiful women and I wanted to tell you about the glitter boobs. I wanted you there with me. I wanted you.”

“You aren’t really thrilling me with this story. Please tell me more about these beautiful women while I sit here, looking like shit.”

He grinned. “It’s a little funny. Admit it.”

I rubbed my face. “God. I am so angry, Michael. I am completely fucked-up.”

Michael ran his fingers through his hair. “We need help, real help and we’ll get it, starting with your surgery.”

“Stop being mean to me.” I clutched at my chest. “I can’t handle mean right now.”

“I get mean when I’m scared.”

I picked at a fingernail. “I’ve never seen you mean before, talking to me the way you did, treating me the way you did.”

“I’ve never truly been scared before, not like this. I’ve never been so terrified in my whole life.”

I uncurled a bit, stretching my legs out, pulling my hair into a loose knot. “We have that in common.”

“We have a lot in common.” He rubbed his hands together. “Wait here.”

Michael jumped to his feet. He disappeared for a moment, then returned with Christophe, the baby taking awkward, tentative steps, his arms stretched forward.

I stood and pointed. “He’s walking?”

Michael grinned, proudly. “Goddamned right. A little more than ten months old. Fucking genius.”

“Mama,” Christophe said, grinning before rushing into his baby babble.

I crossed my arms across my chest and smiled down at my son as he made his way awkwardly across the room. “Why are his arms stretched out like that?”

“Oh that. I am teaching him to walk like a zombie.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You are teaching my child to walk like the undead?”

“We’ve had a lot of time on our hands while I’ve been . . . getting my head right.”

Christophe stopped when he reached me, clapped his little hands and threw his arms up the way he does when he wants to be held.

“Go on, hold him,” Michael said.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to make him dirty.”

“Open your arms, baby. You will not hurt him.”

I looked at my hands, realized they had been closed into fists. I unclenched my fingers and slowly stretched my arms out and leaned down to pick up my child. I held my breath. I tried not to shake, muttering, “I don’t think I can do this.”

But then, I did. I held my child and my arms remembered every inch of him, the weight of his body, the tiny folds of his skin. My body could never forget the memory of my child. I held my boy, his forehead warm and soft against my neck. He smelled so sweet and good and clean as he yammered happily. I offered silent gratitude for the resilience and obliviousness of tiny children.

Christophe grabbed hold of the neck of my T-shirt, something he often did when I held him. I traced his tiny lips with my finger. I tried to give myself that moment. I tried not to think of anything but my husband and child, these best parts of us.