“So I cocked the hammer and held it in front of me like I was going to shoot it and then he got real still. And he goes, ‘Jesus Christ, Evie, put that down. I was only fooling with you.’ He called it ‘fooling,’ Ingrid. He’d been planning to beat me up and then rape me and he called that ‘fooling.’ I was so angry I literally could not see straight. Did you know that really happens? Everything gets sort of blurry and jumpy in your vision, like it has wavery edges. And besides that, my hand was jerking all over the place. Shaking, just like yours was in there in the bathroom.”
She looked at Ingrid again and found she could look at her now. The words came easily now too: “I was worried the gun would go off accidentally, my hand was jerking so bad, so I took a step toward him—I had this idea that I’d stick the gun up against his chest to steady my hand, and to make him take me seriously, you know? So I went right toward him.
“He said something like, ‘There’s no safety catch on that thing, honey, so why don’t you give it to me so it doesn’t discharge.’ As nice as pie he said this. He didn’t even sound drunk anymore. And I said, ‘Get the hell away from me.’ I didn’t believe him about the safety catch, that’s how much I knew. So I kept coming at him, and he kept backing up, and during all this the wind had blown the trailer door wide open because he never latched it. And I backed him right out of the trailer onto the top step. I just wanted him out of there. And I don’t think he even knew he was outside with the rain coming down on him, that’s how scared he was.
“And this is the thing, Ingrid. To have him scared of me, it felt so good. It was such a relief. So I could have stopped right there, but I didn’t. I took another step toward him with the gun pointed right at him. And he started to step back again, and I think he realized then that there was no step there and his arms went out and I thought he was coming at me and I jumped away from him and the gun went off.”
“So he didn’t die from a broken neck,” Ingrid said.
“That’s the weird part. I know I shot him; the gun was pointing right at him. And then he fell down the steps and it was dark and pouring out, and I couldn’t see anything except that he just lay there and wouldn’t move and his body was all limp. So I ran over to my sister’s trailer, and I said, Joe’s dead.
“And my sister knew I’d bought a gun, and straight away she said, ‘Don’t say anything. Don’t tell me anything more.’ She was real cool. ‘Don’t tell the police anything,’ she said, ‘just act hysterical until we figure out what to do.’Then she called 911 and said we’d been in her trailer together and that when I went home I found Joe lying at the bottom of the steps in the mud. And when the paramedics examined him, they told me he’d broken his neck.”
“Did they find the bullet wound later?”
“I don’t know. Joe had been arrested a couple nights earlier for mouthing off to some cop, and it was a small town. Maybe they were pissed. Or maybe somebody knew what kind of a guy he was and they gave me a break. Or maybe it’s even possible that I somehow missed him, and it was just the shock of the gun going off that made him lose his balance and fall. But whatever it was, and even if the bullet didn’t hit him, he died because I fired that gun.”
“You were a battered wife,” Ingrid said. “No one would blame you.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“I killed somebody, Ingrid. There was a person who was alive and got raised up and fed and clothed and learned things and went off to war, and he got screwed up pretty bad, and I’m not saying he was a good guy, but he was a living person. And I just snuffed him out.”
She wiped her eyes. She could still cry for Joe Cullen. “He knew how to fight. He could have taken the gun away from me if he hadn’t thought I was going to pull the trigger. He made this little yelping noise when he jumped away from me. He would never have fallen like that if he hadn’t been terrified. For a long time I told myself that it had all been just bad luck, that I’d never meant for anything to happen to him, that I just wanted him to get away from me. But then after what I did to Ray, I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe I did mean to shoot Joe.”
“What do you mean, ‘what you did to Ray’?”
“The rock. You know, the rock that went through the window,” Evelyn added when Ingrid looked blank.
“You threw it?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“But I thought—you said—I mean, why?”
“I was angry. Not much of an excuse, is it? I didn’t know I was going to throw it, and I didn’t know Ray was in the study, but the point is that I did throw it, and it grazed his head and I could have killed him. I could have killed two husbands in two years, Ingrid. Ray doesn’t know about the shooting, and I couldn’t tell him about the rock either. And I wouldn’t be telling you now, except that I know you won’t say anything.”
“Of course I won’t—”
“—Given that you just shot my husband.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Ingrid said.
“Didn’t you?” Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “Well, you can wonder about that for the rest of your life. Just like me.” She shook her head. “After I threw the rock I thought, maybe it wasn’t an accident, maybe somehow I knew that Ray was in there. And I was afraid he’d realize it was me who threw it, that he’d come to his senses and see what I was really like. And then what? It seemed like my whole marriage, my whole life with him, could be over just like that. I felt like I was in the center ring under the spotlight and everyone was watching me and I was watching myself and I could feel that I was just about to screw up everything. But then you came along.”
Ingrid stared.
“‘And then I came along’? What does that mean?”
“Just that then I could catch my breath. All the attention wasn’t on me. I guess I felt safer.”
“That’s why you wanted me to live with you?” Ingrid asked. “To baby-sit your marriage? And is that why you want me here now? To be your fucking babysitter?”
“Oh, honey, no.” Evelyn reached out and took Ingrid’s hand. Ingrid shook it free.
“Don’t lie to me anymore.” Ingrid was crying now. “I know you’re lying. Why else would you have wanted someone like me around? I couldn’t figure it out at the time. Ray, I understood—Ray and I had stuff to talk about, but not you, you didn’t seem to like me at all.”
“Ingrid, just listen a minute. At first, before I ever met you, it
was
just that I wanted someone else around. I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do. But I didn’t know you would be you. And yesterday when I said I wanted you to keep on living with us, believe me, it had nothing to do with Ray or with me being afraid of what would happen. I wanted—I want you to stay with us because I’ve never had as much fun with anyone as I have with you. You’re my best friend and I love you. That’s why.”
Ingrid was supposed to get on a plane the day after tomorrow. Leave Evelyn behind and fly two thousand miles away. How could she go on, when this was the case?
“I can’t live without you,” Ingrid said aloud, and relief and despair flooded through her in twin currents that pulled her down flat on the bed. “I can’t just go to California and never see you again.” She buried her face in the bedspread. “But I can’t stay with you guys anymore, either. Not after this. I don’t know what to do.”
Hating herself, Ingrid pressed her face into the scratchy polyester. The bedspread grew damp with tears and snot. She imagined suffocating herself right there.
A quick end in a crummy hotel room, Mister.
And then a hand began massaging her back.
Ingrid felt her body grow rigid with wanting. She stopped crying. She held her breath.
A second hand joined the first and rubbed Ingrid’s shoulders.
Breathe
, said Evelyn’s hands on her shoulders.
Relax.
From the nape of her neck all the way down her spine, a tingling surged over the surface of her skin, filled Ingrid with that crazy electricity. Her whole body was lighting up. Humming. Powered.
Ingrid rolled over and gazed up at Evelyn. Evelyn’s hair had come loose and hung in a red curtain around her face. Ingrid reached up and tried to make her own hands do what Evelyn’s had done, softly kneading Evelyn’s shoulders, her arms. Then Ingrid’s hands added an idea of their own and pulled Evelyn down onto the bed beside her. Ingrid put her hands on Evelyn’s chest below her collar bone and pushed, gently. Trying to push into Evelyn’s heart an understanding of how important this was.
Evelyn was still for a moment. Then, in a voice that seemed to be thinking of something else, something nice that had happened a long time ago, she spoke. Her voice was so soft that Ingrid caught only the tone, not the words. Ingrid moved her head closer to Evelyn’s, until her ear was right beside Evelyn’s mouth. “Say it again?” she asked.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Evelyn whispered.
Ingrid closed her eyes and put her arms around Evelyn. Felt Evelyn’s arms copy the gesture. She was holding, she was being held, and the feel of Evelyn was pressed against every cell of the palms of her hands. Ingrid slid her lucky fingers up Evelyn’s spine, laced them through her hair, and then moved her head and found Evelyn’s opening mouth.
Oh, at last, at last.
Kissing was not the word for it; she was dying and living for the first time. Her mouth mixing with Evelyn’s was all there was inside the dark universe behind her eyelids. The swollen break in Evelyn’s lower lip, the salty taste of blood; the sweet perfection of Evelyn’s top lip, the pressure of Evelyn’s breasts against her chest, the heat of them, she was drowning in tiger-colored hair and sweet tongue, she was fumbling at Evelyn’s buttons until Evelyn found her hands and held them still. Laid them aside. Ingrid opened her eyes, froze in a blur of terror that all this might come to an end.
“Some softness,” Evelyn said, more to herself, as if she were contemplating a new flavor of ice cream. “Some softness would be nice.” She twitched each button from its buttonhole and slid out of her blouse.
And just as all the tattoos finally became visible to Ingrid—the sun, the tiger, the carp and the lilies, the rainbow, the butterflies the heart, the mermaid curled around Evelyn’s navel—Ingrid found that she no longer cared about seeing them. Not now. As the sun’s orange rays splayed out across Evelyn’s sternum and disappeared beneath the cups of her bra, Ingrid sat up on her knees and bent her head in supplication. Slid the lacy straps off Evelyn’s shoulders. In the midst of all there was to look at, Ingrid closed her eyes. At last, she kissed her way to the heart of her nuclear reaction. To the fusion at the center of the sun.
In the bed on the other side of the thin motel wall, Ray awoke in the darkness to a sound he knew well. It was a sound he should not have been hearing: the sound of his wife making love. But his wife was not beside him, and the bed he was lying in was not his bed. His brain, too fatigued by alcohol poisoning to make sense of the contradiction, allowed him to roll over and fall back to sleep. The next time he awakened, everything was quiet except the pain in his own body and he did not remember the earlier sounds.
She woke up in the night, Mister. She was still in my arms and she stirred there. Then stayed there, sweet-smelling flesh in that stale room.
“I’ll take you up on it,” she said dreamily. “I’ll go away with you. To California.”
“You will?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“For a week,” she said. “We’ll do all those things you told me about, rent a car and drive around and stuff. I need to get away from here for a while.”
“That would be great,” was all I said. But then I lay awake the rest of the night, dreaming of what we’d do. A week would be just the beginning.
In the frail darkness that only has an hour left to live before dawn kills it, she woke again. Actually, I woke her. I was so excited.
“I have an idea,” I said. She laid her head on my chest and I stroked her hair.
“What’s your idea,” she asked. Her voice, Mister. Dreamy with sleep. Even her voice got me.
“When we get to California, we’ll just stay there,” I told her. “You’ll leave him. Come with me to live. We’ll get a place in Hollywood, just like you’ve always wanted. A little bungalow, say.”
I’d got it all worked out. She’d open a tattoo parlor that was also a nail salon. I’d have my office on the floor above, where I’d see clients and take cases and stuff.
“Sounds wonderful,” she said sleepily. She nestled her head on my shoulder.
I was so happy, so deliriously happy, that I was laughing while I said it and then she laughed too.
In the darkness she had a full, easy laugh that rang out in the air of that crummy room like the pealing of bells.
27.
The curtains on the Lone Pine Motel’s windows had been new twenty years ago. Now, the light-blocking fabric was disintegrating. Evelyn woke to a pinholes of light that seemed to have been run through a strainer. She opened her eyes and surveyed the outlines of where she was. Ingrid asleep next to her, curled like a comma beside the exclamation point she suddenly found herself in: Last night! Ingrid!