Such a Pretty Girl (16 page)

I
sit on the front steps. My stomach heaves and I just manage to part my knees before I vomit on the step below. Wipe my mouth on my arm and realize I’m shaking.

I think I’m in shock. The sun is brutal and I should be sweating, but my skin is cool and clammy. I gaze up the road to the bend. The world is tilted and the scenery jumbled, sharp-edged and carnival bright.

Nigel rounds the bend in a shuffling run, shouting into his cellphone.

I don’t remember calling him, but I must have, because a squad car screams into sight, passing him and squealing up to my curb.

I grope for the railing. Stand. Wobble down past the splattered vomit. “Virgin most powerful,” I croak and one of the cops says, “What?” like he didn’t hear me, but it’s too late because the world spins crazy and I’m gone.

M
y mother is arrested and charged with a list of offenses, including leaving me alone with a known pedophile. The judge grants bail because she is not considered a flight risk.

She hasn’t contacted me. Not even a note.

She spends her days at the hospital with my father. She doesn’t understand it yet, but he is my gift to her. He is all hers now; she wins by default as there is no one else in the race. Well, except for the newly fertilized egg she’s carrying, but she’s got a couple of months yet to decide whether or not she really wants to share him again with someone else.

My guess is no.

The doctors reviewed the nanny cam tapes and agreed that although the blunt-force trauma from the oaken icon was sure to do
some
damage, it should not have been enough to cause my father a C4 spinal-cord injury resulting in quadriplegia.

But somehow it was.

The doctors say my father has some function below the level of the injury. He can move his head and neck and has limited shoulder movement. The rest of him is paralyzed, but with technological advances and assistance devices like a chin controller and voice recognition, he can still go online or operate an electric wheelchair.

He is also under arrest. Big time.

Nigel relays the news. His voice is grave, but his eyes glow with triumph.

It’s been four days now, but it’s still hard to believe I’m done being hunted.

I hold one quiet, curious card close to my vest and only play it with Nigel, even though he’s a bigger skeptic than I am. Was. Am.

“But don’t you think it’s weird that Andy left the Madonna in case I needed her and she’s what saved me? I mean, I know that’s not how he meant it and all, but still,” I say on Friday as we amble down Leah Louisa’s quiet, tree-lined street. She’s my official guardian now and the rose room my new home. I stick my hands into my empty shorts pockets. The police have confiscated my knife and Leah Louisa, my cigarettes.

The Dumpster got my overalls.

“Hell no.
You’re
what saved you, kid. Not divine intervention.” Nigel wedges a cigarette in his mouth and offers me one.

I look around and accept. No doubt word will somehow get back to my grandmother and she’ll insist we discuss my addiction with my new therapist, but I don’t mind. It’ll be good to argue about something normal for a change.

He lights them and squints at me through the smoke. “You know what? Check that. You know better than I do what happened and if thinking you had a little help along the way worked for you, then who am I to say it didn’t?” He shrugs. “Point being, I got no solid answer on this one. You need to decide for yourself.”

“I know,” I say and linger in the shade of a massive maple tree. I run my fingers along its craggy bark. It’s weathered what, a hundred seasons and still it stands fast, roots deep and branches spreading. “So you honestly think it was just a coincidence?”

He sighs and hitches up his saggy jeans. “Does it really matter what I think?”

“Yes,” I say and meet his gaze. “It always has. You’re the best man I know.”

He looks away. Blinks and rubs his eyes. “Damn smoke.” Catches me in a brief, one-armed embrace that’s more headlock than hug. “All right, honestly, between you and me? I think you got the rest of your life to figure it out.”

“Gee, thanks,” I whisper and snort a laugh into his rumpled sport shirt.

“Don’t mention it.” His cellphone rings and he releases me. Digs it from his pocket and answers. “Balthazar. Hey, how’re you doing?” His considering gaze searches my face. “Yeah, she’s right here. No, I didn’t. Sure. In about ten minutes. Hold on.” He hands me the phone. “It’s Andy.” He turns and ambles a few yards down the block to give me some privacy.

“Andy?” I say into the phone, breathless.

“Mer? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I made it, Andy. It’s done.” Hearing his voice has me near tears and suddenly I can’t wait to be with him, to be
new
with him, and to tell him yes, he was right, all things are possible and there actually may be such things as miracles. “Where are you? Are you still on your way home? Did Nigel tell you what happened?”

“We’re home, Mer. We never got there.”

“What?” I stare at Nigel’s broad back. “I…why not?”

“The guy died,” Andy says simply. “The victim soul, I mean.”

“Oh my God,” I say, straightening. “That’s awful. What happened?”

“Huh?” he says, distracted. “Oh, uh, wait a minute. Okay. Sorry. Uh, we got to the motel Sunday night and my mother called to confirm our meeting for Monday. His wife said he was really agitated and told us to call back the next morning to make sure he was up to having visitors. We called Monday morning before we got back on the road, and they said he’d passed away maybe a half hour earlier.”

“So you never even got to see him,” I say, leaning against a tree. “That sucks.”

Andy sighs. “I guess. The brochure said he’d been a victim soul for like sixty years, bedridden, in and out of a coma. He’d received more than three thousand of the faithful over his lifetime and that’s a lot of human suffering for one person to absorb. Too much, maybe. Now I’m kind of glad I didn’t add to it.”

He sounds different, subdued but not devastated, and it leaves me at a loss. “Oh. Well, that’s good, I guess.” Is it? I don’t know. This conversation isn’t anything like I thought it would be. I thought he’d say he loved me, that he’d be dying to know what had happened between me and my father, and how soon could I get there to see him, but so far, nothing. A low-level dread settles over me. “So, when did you get home?”

A heartbeat hesitation. “Tuesday morning,” he says, and the words echo like a death knell in the ensuing silence. “I know I should have called sooner, but I talked to Nigel and you had so much going on and I didn’t want to…what?” He says impatiently, off to the side. “Hold on, Mer.” He covers the phone but I can still hear him. “I
am,
Mom. Give me a chance.” Uncovers the phone. “Listen, it’s too much to go into right now. I’ll tell you the next time I see you, okay?”

“I…okay.” So this is it then. The moment I’ve feared since we first met. Funny, how I’d prepared for his leaving me if he could walk and I’d prepared for his leaving me because of my father being around, but what I’d never prepared for was his leaving me while still paralyzed and with my father safely gone. “But you know I’m not living there anymore, right? I’m at Leah Louisa’s now. I can’t just cut out of here and come over.” I wait, barely breathing, sinking into the gaping silence. “Hello?”

“Yeah, I know,” he says and sounds distracted. “Everything’s different now. Look, I’ve got to go. Are you going to be there for a while? Good. Give me your grandmother’s number and I’ll call you back in like half an hour, okay?”

Will you? I think dully, but give him the number anyway. He says good-bye and hangs up, leaving me standing with the dead phone pressed to my ear like an empty seashell.

“You okay, kid?” Nigel says and eases the phone from my hand.

I blink at him, mute.

He fidgets. Checks his watch. “I was gonna tell you that they never made it to Iowa. They turned around and came home.” He pulls a crumpled hanky from his pocket and mops his florid face. “Come on, let’s head back to your granny’s house. This heat is rough on a fat old man.”

Numb, I fall into step beside him. “You told them what happened?”

“Yeah, and I should have known better than to talk religion with Paula,” Nigel says, shaking his head and plodding on every crack in the sidewalk. “Jesus, she’s excitable. As soon as I told her you whacked your old man with the statue Monday morning she ripped off those ugly glasses and went down on her knees in some kind of swoon—”

He’s talking too much, clobbering the silence so I won’t say anything, won’t burst into tears and buckle under the weight of this last, awful straw.

And I won’t. Not yet, anyway.

He stops in front of my grandmother’s house and checks his watch again. “Well, I guess I’m gonna get going. Gilly needs walking and I’ve got a sh—er, crapload of errands to run. Did I tell you Paula’s car broke down at the entrance to the complex, right in front of the Cambridge Oaks sign?” The ghost of his old, easy grin breaks through. “It took the towing company half a day to get out and move it and the association was having hissy fits. I’ve got to hand it to Paula, though; she let ’em sweat a while before she told ’em she was finally junking it. Now I’m her ride till she gets another car.” His smile fades and he flushes, uncomfortable, like now that I’m not in the condo loop anymore we have nothing in common. “Let me go. I’ll get headquarters to release the Madonna statue out of Evidence and bring it back to you as soon as I can.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s Andy’s. Give it to him.” I tuck back my hair and look him straight in the eye. He needs to know that I know it’s all over. “You’ll see him again before I will.”

His mouth opens and closes. “Yeah. Okay.” He hesitates and in an odd gesture, chucks me gently under the chin. “Keep the faith, kid,” he says and lumbers off to his car.

I watch him drive away, wanting nothing more than to sit on the curb and bawl, but the people on this street don’t huddle with their feet in the gutter so I wander into the house, past Leah Louisa unloading the dishwasher, and end up in the den. I flop down onto the couch and wonder what just happened. Somehow four splintered into three and one, and I never even saw it coming.

“Did you have a nice talk with Nigel?” Leah Louisa calls from the kitchen.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I say, staring at the ceiling. It’s smooth, off-white, a big blank canvas with no tiles to count and no memories staining the surface.

It’s just a ceiling.

I close my eyes and think of Andy, who prayed so hard and got so little, and of the Madonna, whose presence saved me from a fate worse than death and at the same time somehow sentenced my father to the exact same thing.

Think even harder for a minute, then get up and go straight to the bookcase.

There’s a question I need answered.

Mystical Rose. Virgin most powerful.

I slip out the sliding glass door and settle on the stone wall outlining the patio. The sweet, cotton-candy scent of a hundred blooming irises rides the breeze.

Mother most merciful. Cause of our joy.

I think of grander plans and coincidence, of the victim soul’s death and my father’s inexplicable paralysis. I think of how amazing it is that I’m not a murderer.

A victim soul is a pious individual chosen to absorb the pain and suffering of others.

My father isn’t pious. He attends no services and worships no god.

Unless there’s something I’ve missed.

I open the dictionary and page to the Ps. Run my finger down the column until I find it.

“Pious.”

There are several definitions. I didn’t know that.

“Showing reverence for deity and devotion to divine worship.” No. “Marked by conspicuous religiosity.” No. “Marked by sham or hypocrisy.” Oh. I stop, heart pounding. Read it again. “ ‘Marked by sham or hypocrisy.’ ” Slowly lift my head. “
Now
I get it.”

Mother inviolate. Mirror of justice.

“Meredith?” Leah Louisa stands at the sliding glass door. “Nigel and Paula Mues are here, and they brought along a young man named Andy who wants very much to see you.” She steps aside to let him through.

I tuck my hair back behind my ears.

Meet his shining gaze and break into a smile.

He is so tall.