16
PRAYER
On a Saturday in late October, Nikki came up behind me in the kitchen where I stood at the sink. I had started washing the huge pile of dishes, but I hadn’t touched one in a couple of minutes. I was staring into space. I was thinking about Murdoch. Because of course, it wasn’t only Ben I brooded about angrily that autumn. I thought of Murdoch much more often than I thought about Ben.
Thinking about Murdoch was a bad idea, though, and not just because it depressed and angered me. Nikki seemed able to sniff it out like a shark smelling blood.
I was wondering what Murdoch was doing right at that moment. Was he at home on East Tenth Street? It was only four blocks away. What would he say if I called him? How would it be if we tried to revert now to the old plan, Callie’s old plan, of being friends with Murdoch? Would that be possible?
I jumped when Nikki spoke.
“Why are you so quiet, Matt? Don’t tell me, I know. You’re thinking about that loser again. Well, you know what? I think your precious Murdoch is gay, that’s what I think. It all adds up. Didn’t you notice the way he cooked? The way he always wanted things so clean? That’s a sign. You never see a real man scrub a stove that way. You can have grease an inch thick before a real man would even notice. It’s a good thing I got him away from you. I notice you doing more cleaning around here these days than you used to. Like those dishes. I didn’t ask you to do them, did I?”
She paused, waiting for a reaction.
“No,” I said. “I just noticed there were a lot of them. And none of Emmy’s favorite dishes were clean.”
“Hmm,” Nikki said.
I tried to ignore her. I picked up a dish and gave it a swipe with the sponge.
“Matthew?” said my mother.
“What?”
“Did Murdoch ever try to molest you?”
“What?!” I turned and stared at her, my mouth gaping open.
She smiled. “Should I call Social Services and report him? I could do that, you know. I could report Murdoch for child abuse.”
There was no way to reply to Nikki when she was like this. But at the same time, if I didn’t reply, that might be the wrong thing, too.
“He never did anything to me,” I said. “You know that.” Instantly, I realized I would have done better to say nothing. She put a hand on my shoulder.
“Do I really know that? You have to understand,” she said, sweetly now, “my first priority is protecting my kids.”
“I’m fine,” I said. I turned back to the dishes. “Nobody’s done anything to me.”
“I don’t know,” said Nikki. Something about her tone made me look at her again. A strange expression had filled her face; a kind of manic glee. “You don’t seem happy these days. You seem worried and anxious, and I saw on TV that that can come from sexual abuse.” She smiled again. “You might not even be aware. Sometimes kids repress these things.”
“I would be aware,” I said. I knew I should shut up, but I couldn’t. “First, Murdoch’s not gay. Second, even if he were, he’d never hurt a kid. You know that.”
“No,” Nikki said. “I don’t know it. He’s violent sometimes. Murdoch has a temper. He tries to keep it under control, but it’s there. And you’ve changed, Matthew. You’ve gotten all sad and depressed. Something must have happened. I have my instincts, like any mother.”
She sounded so reasonable. If I hadn’t known her, I would have believed her. A social worker would take her seriously.
“I think Murdoch is responsible for the change in you,” said Nikki, accurately. “Maybe I’ll report him.” She squeezed my shoulder, as if comforting me, and then walked away toward her bedroom, humming to herself.
I picked up another dish with some vague idea that I would at least pretend to work—and it broke in two in my hands. The pieces fell into the dishwater. I wanted to pick them up, but I couldn’t seem to move.
Now I would have to contact Murdoch. I would have to warn him about what Nikki might do. I would talk to him as soon as possible. I would call. Or, better, tell him in person. This wasn’t the kind of thing you could say over the phone.
I concocted an immediate plan to go ring his doorbell that night, once Nikki went out. But I didn’t. The reason was you, Emmy. You and a prayer.
That night, at bedtime, you knelt down by your bed in full view of Nikki, who had just read Who Hops? five times to you, with infinite patience and love. However, Nikki was also all dressed up to go out, and at this point, she was looking at her watch.
“You want to pray, Emmy-pie? Well, okay. Make it fast, though. Mommy’s already late. She’s going out.”
So am I, I thought, but kept my face blank.
You bowed your head. You were silent a moment while Nikki tapped her foot. Then you said, all in one breathless rush: “Dear God, please keep Murdoch safe and make him know I love him and miss him, thank you, God, amen.”
My heart stopped.
You peeked up from your hands at Nikki, half scared, half delighted, all determined. And for the first time, I realized that one day, you might be a formidable woman. If you could stay safe now. Now and the next ten years.
I snatched you up one bare second before Nikki could get to you, turned, and raced to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind us and locking it.
Nikki smashed her fist into the bathroom door. “You let me in there! Matthew! You let me in!”
Despite the way my heart was pounding, my voice was calm, as if I were responding to a question about whether, say, I wanted a glass of water. “Go out like you planned, Mom, and have a good time. You deserve a night out. I’ll take care of Emmy. She’ll still be here later, when you come home.”
Silence. Then three hard bangs on the door. Slam. Slam. Slam.
You clung to me, your eyes wide and excited, absolutely aware of what was going on, and of your part in causing it. That meant we’d entered a whole new world. I’d worry about that later.
“Emmy will still be here later,” I repeated through the door, in between bangs. “She. Will. Be. Here. Later.”
I heard Callie’s voice, outside the door, saying something to Nikki.
Then the banging stopped. From the other side of the door, Nikki spoke, as calmly as I had: “Okay. I’ll be back later.” And I heard her move away.
I didn’t dare come out with you, though, until Callie told us Nikki had really gone out.
In silence, then, Callie and I put you to bed. You dropped right off to sleep like an angel, satisfied and exhausted by your work.
“What do you think she’ll do to her?” I asked Callie tensely, after we retreated to the kitchen.
Callie shrugged. She stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I don’t know. She might lock her in the hall closet for a few hours. She might not let her use the toilet. Or something else that she never did to me or you.” She paused. “Or absolutely nothing at all.”
I closed my eyes to rest them for a second. “We can’t go on like this, Callie,” I said.
“Oh? Do you have another idea?” said my sister.
I was silent.
Callie then said, apologetically: “Let’s go watch TV, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
I thought: Later, later, I’ll go tell Murdoch. I have to, now.
17
“TELLING”
Emmy, you have been living so safely in the suburbs with Aunt Bobbie and me these last years, with Callie not far away, and that’s all you really remember nowadays. So, right about now, you might be wondering why I didn’t “tell.” Why I didn’t go to a teacher at school, or to the police station, and report that we were scared to live with our mother and would somebody help us, please.
I suppose I could have done that, although I don’t actually believe it would have worked. I think Nikki would have convinced an investigator that things were okay enough in our home. I decided that early on.
When I was in the fourth grade, a social worker came to talk to our class. She st
ood at the front of the room and explained to us that if someone hurt you, or touched you in a private place on your body, or if you were neglected, or if other things happened in your life that made you uncomfortable or scared, then you could just tell any adult at school about it. That adult—a teacher, an aide, the principal, it didn’t matter who you told—would help instantly. That adult would talk to the other adults and they would contact state Social Services to investigate what you had said. Even if the person who had hurt you was in your own family, everything possible would be done to protect you.
“It’s the law to protect children,” the social worker had said. “It is also our sacred duty. We take it very seriously.” She walked up and down the aisles of our classroom. She looked each one of us in the eye. “Tell someone,” she said. “Always tell an adult here at school if you have a problem at home.”
I listened to her carefully and with great interest. But I was not an abused or neglected child. I was a loved child, and so were my sisters. Nikki said so all the time. She did the things she did because she loved us.
Years later, when I began to understand that Nikki’s form of love wasn’t exactly the standard one, I still never really thought much about “telling” anyone. Once, I did try to imagine myself talking to a teacher. But the conversation in my head didn’t get very far.
“Well, you see, our mother is weird and it’s crazy living with her and her temper—uh, no, she doesn’t hit us a lot. That’s only happened a few times, and we never really got hurt. No, no broken bones. No bleeding. Sometimes there are men in and out—uh, no, nothing happens like what you’re asking. We just have to hear what’s going on, mostly. But the thing is, we worry a lot.”
It didn’t sound serious enough.
Callie and I knew a couple of kids from school who had had to go into foster care. Foster care didn’t sound good, and it didn’t sound safe. They often broke siblings up, we understood, and sent them to different families. And then, in the end, the kids were just sent home again after the parents promised to do better, or had taken some parenting class or something like that.
We were better off just sticking it out with Nikki.
And you know what? I still think that, even now. I think that if Callie or I had told the authorities, even if we were taken seriously, even if there was an investigation as a result, it would just have been a detour. Our fate was our fate.
18
CALLIE’S PLAN
Callie and I stayed up that Saturday night, wanting to be awake when Nikki came home—she didn’t, by the way, until well into the morning—in case she was still mad at you about the prayer for Murdoch. And at the time we thought it was just as likely that she would not still be angry. She did have the capacity to forgive and forget completely. Or she could be distracted by other things—she might come home with a man, for example. Or a new pair of pants. But also, she could wait, sometimes, until you were sure she had forgotten whatever it was you had done. And then you would discover that she had not forgotten.
You just never knew.
We flung ourselves on the rug in front of the TV and channel-surfed until Callie found a movie called Pleasantville that she wanted to watch. It was about a brother and sister who are magically transported into the world of a black-and-white television show from the 1950s, where everything is nice and predictable and utterly good, and there’s nothing tricky to deal with like sex or imagination or fear. But the girl sets out to destroy Pleasantville because she doesn’t like things to be safe. She wants them messy and colorful and passionate and alive. The movie meant this to be a good thing, but I didn’t like it. Once I realized where the movie was going, I grabbed the remote control and changed the channel to a movie about college kids.
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked Callie.
“No.” But my sister was clearly less interested in this movie than in the Pleasantville one. I felt her eyes on me.
“Matt, listen. Why did Emmy say what she did tonight?”
“You mean about Murdoch?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess she still thinks about him,” I said. “And misses him.”
“Right,” Callie said patiently. “But I meant, why did she come out and say it to Mom? Why didn’t she know better?”
“She did it on purpose. I could tell.”
“She ought to know better!”
“She does,” I said. “She decided to do it anyway.”
Callie picked up the remote from where it lay on the carpet between us. She switched the TV back to Pleasantville, where the girl was causing people to see things in color. She was like an infection, that girl. I tried to get the remote back, but Callie put it under her stomach.
“That’s a problem,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.”
“You know what it is?” Callie said thoughtfully. “It’s that she feels safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Emmy feels safe. She knew we would protect her from Mom, and so she felt like she could say whatever she wanted. Take the risk.” She paused. “And as long as she feels safe, she might keep on doing stuff like that.”
“What exactly are you trying to say?” I sat up and turned my back to the movie. “That we shouldn’t protect Emmy?”
Callie kept staring at the TV. “No.”
“That’s what it sounded like you were saying.”
“I’m just thinking things out.” Callie’s voice was flat. “Emmy feeling safe is dangerous. For her. For us. It’s just a fact, Matt. I never imagined she would feel safe.” She added: “I never have.”
I turned away from Callie. Of course it was better, safer, for Emmy, with both of us older and on the watch. I had only been one and a half when Callie was born. I had done my best.
On the television, the brother, who had loved Pleasantville before, was becoming convinced that his sister was right after all. Color and life were better, even if they came with pain and death attached. Wow, thanks for the explanation, Hollywood. I said, “I’m glad that Emmy feels safe. It means we’re doing a good job.”
“Maybe. But we’re just doing what we always did.” A pause. “I don’t think it’s only about us.”
I saw where she was going. “Murdoch,” I said. “You’re saying that Emmy feels safe because of Murdoch. Even though he’s gone.”
Callie’s hands gripped each other. “Look. I’m not sure how to say this. But Matt, it’s time to stop dreaming. It’s time to live in the real world. All of us, I mean. Emmy. You.” A pause. “And me.”
Was that an admission? It didn’t matter. I said, “I do live in the real world.”
“You know what I’m trying to say,” said Callie softly.
I did. I hoped she wouldn’t say it out loud, but she did. It didn’t matter that her voice stayed soft.
“Matt, it’s all over. He’s gone.”
“I know that,” I said.
“No, you don’t. You’re still hoping, like Emmy. But you know what? Murdoch’s not some superhero who’s going to swoop in and change everything. That dream is over. Our life is what it is. Don’t you see? It’s getting dangerous to go on dreaming that it’s going to be different.”
“Because of what Emmy said tonight.”
“That’s not the only thing,” said Callie, even more softly. And then I did turn to look at her. In an instant I knew.
I said, “You heard Nikki this afternoon. You heard what she was threatening about Murdoch.”
Callie nodded.
I shrugged. “I’ll warn him,” I said.
“No,” said Callie. “You have to forget him. Not pretend to. Really forget. We have to get on with our lives as they are. Listen, Matt. Think for a minute. Even when you went to talk to Daddy, you were really thinking about Murdoch. You were trying to make Ben be Murdoch.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“No,” I said again. But in fact, she was
right that I’d had superhero fantasies, father fantasies . . .
“I’m sorry,” Callie was saying. “Matt, I’m so sorry. I wish it had all come true. But it didn’t. Okay? We agree?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“We can get back to normal here if we try. That’s what we need to do. We need to get back to thinking and feeling exactly the way we did before. It’s the only way to reassure Mom.”
“But how are we supposed to do that?” I said. “Program ourselves to forget? I can’t. Emmy can’t.”
“We just pretend.”
“I’ve been pretending.”
“We have to do a good job at it. A great job.”
I was silent.
“Will you try, Matt? We can’t mention him or even think of him. We have to erase him from our memories. He has to be dead to us. That time, last summer—it never happened. It was just like the summer before.” Callie got right in my face. “Emmy’s only little, Matt. Just six. If we help her to forget, she will.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“She will if we show her how,” said Callie. And then she added, “And so will you. In time, we’ll all forget.” She waited.
I didn’t believe I would. I also didn’t believe we could go back in time. But Callie was right that you, Emmy, couldn’t be allowed to goad Nikki. “Okay,” I said.
19
DEMONS
What neither Callie nor I knew that night, as we talked about trying to go back in time in our relationship with Nikki, was that things were changing in our mother—just as you, Callie, and I had changed. I believe it had to do with Murdoch, Murdoch as kind of a catalyzing experience in our lives, the chemical ingredient that made an already poisonous compound unstable as well. I might be wrong; it might simply have been time itself that destabilized us so sharply and so permanently. Whatever it was, the end result was the same: No amount of pretending could take us back to the way we were before.
The change in Nikki over that winter . . . I’m trying to find a way to describe it.