“He’s big,” I said doubtfully. I wasn’t sure I believed that Murdoch didn’t know where he’d hit Rob, and how hard, and exactly what kind of damage it had done.
Murdoch shrugged. “So? Last night, he was also drunk and slow. Some big men never learn how to fight, Matt. They think they don’t need to, because of their size. He’s one of those. There was really no problem.”
“But—”
“Really, Matt. You never have to worry about me in a fight. Believe me.” There was an ease to him as he talked about this. I remembered the convenience store, and believed him.
“Your truck, though,” I said. “The glass.”
“Insurance will take care of it.” He sounded calm. “It’s just an inconvenience.”
“I don’t think you’ve understood what I’m saying here,” I said. “She did this. Don’t you get it? She did it!”
“I understand, Matt,” Murdoch said mildly.
The coffeemaker beeped. Murdoch turned to it, reaching for two mugs with his right hand. I leaped up to help, got the mugs away from him and poured the coffee. He let me. “There’s milk in the fridge,” he said. I got the milk out, and paused to look at a picture on the refrigerator of an elderly couple. It hadn’t been there when we used to come over to Murdoch’s house before.
“Is that your parents?” I asked.
“No,” said Murdoch. There was an edge to his voice.
“Oh,” I said. Somehow, the tension in the room had risen.
Murdoch sighed. He took in an audible breath. “Well, here’s one way to look at it. Your mother was getting her rage out of her system. One black eye and some broken glass are a pretty small price to pay.”
I think it was a few weeks after the Rob incident that I found out about the abusive phone messages Nikki had been leaving regularly on Murdoch’s voice mail. Once I knew about that, I understood that he’d been downplaying his reaction for my benefit. Or maybe he really did believe she would stop now. But at the time, hearing Murdoch seem to shrug off what had happened to him and his truck, I was furious. It seemed to me that he didn’t get it; wasn’t taking it—wasn’t taking Nikki—seriously enough.
“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. It’s not out of her system. She’s just getting started. She’s got other plans for you.”
“Have a seat,” Murdoch said.
I ignored him. I gulped down a mouthful of coffee and milk and sugar. “She’s just getting started,” I said again.
“Well, I’m going to sit,” Murdoch said. “You can join me if you like.” He turned the chair away from the table so that he faced me as I paced in the small area of the kitchen. I walked back and forth, back and forth. The coffee sloshed perilously around in my mug.
“You’d better believe me about her,” I said. “You have to believe me. You didn’t get hurt enough last night to make her happy. She’s nowhere near through. I don’t even know what would make her happy.”
“Me dead?”
I scowled. “That’s not funny, Murdoch.”
“I wasn’t laughing. I was asking. What exactly should I be afraid of here?” He still sounded only slightly interested; nowhere near as worried as I wanted him to be. As, actually, he should have been.
“She won’t want you dead,” I said. “That’s no fun. No fun at all.”
His eyes flickered then. I think it was the word fun. Nikki’s word.
“What would be fun for her?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Seeing you hurt. Seeing you sorry. Seeing you in trouble. Seeing you worry. That would all be fun.”
“Fun for your mother.”
“Yes!” There had been an odd note in his voice. I blurted: “Who else do you think I’m talking about here?”
Murdoch drank some coffee. Then he said, very gently, “You’re angry at me yourself, Matthew.”
It took me a few seconds to grasp what he was—sort of—asking. And when I did, it was as if I were the one who’d been hit.
“You’re wrong,” I said at last. “I’m just trying to help.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“I didn’t come here because I wanted to see you hurt. It’s not fun for me. Okay? I’m not—I’m not at all like her. Same with Callie and Emmy. It’s you we—” I stopped. It’s you we love. I didn’t say it out loud, but Murdoch looked away anyway. I knew he understood.
I also knew he didn’t want it. It was a burden.
“There’s something else,” I said, after a minute. I was forcing myself to talk.
“Take it easy,” said Murdoch. “It’s okay.”
“No. It’s actually not okay. And I hate when people say that, when they say it’s okay even though it’s not. It’s better to tell the truth.”
Silence.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize,” said Murdoch. “You’re right. It’s not okay. I won’t pretend that it is anymore.” Something in his voice—just the weariness, maybe—made it possible for me to look over at him. And when I did, I realized that he was taking me seriously after all. He had put down his coffee mug and dropped his elbows onto the table. He was clasping his hands in front of him, watching them, not me, and his eyes, even the one that wasn’t swollen, were nearly shut. To my disbelief, I realized that he was on the verge of tears.
Not so strong after all. I was astonished, and alarmed. I could feel the alarm like a twist in my gut.
“I should be the one apologizing,” Murdoch said. “I get it. I sort of promised things to you and Callie and Emmy. I didn’t mean to. I thought I was just being a friend to you kids. But—”
He looked up and so did I. Our eyes met.
“But you need a father, Matt,” he said softly. “A real father. All of you do. And it wasn’t okay that I stepped in there and pretended for a little while. Not when it wasn’t real, and I knew it wasn’t real.” And now he was crying. He was actually crying. “I’m sorry,” he said. He kept right on talking, just as if there weren’t tears on his face. “I had no business doing that, and I see that I hurt you. All of you. Which I never meant to do. I never meant to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt us,” I said uncomfortably. “It was—we like you.”
“But I did hurt you. I led you to expect . . . ” He trailed off. Shrugged. “You know, Matt.”
I wanted to say no, no, no, he hadn’t led us to expect anything. That I didn’t know what he was talking about. But I was the one who had insisted on the truth a minute ago. After a few moments, I managed to say, “I have a father. I know you haven’t met him, but he exists. He cares about us. And I did want a friend.” I cleared my throat. “I still do. We—Callie and Emmy and I—we actually need a friend now. Right now. Someone who—who—” I wasn’t able to articulate it at first, and then I found the right words. “Someone who will believe us about her. She’s crazy, Murdoch. I could tell you—there’s stuff I could tell you . . . anyway. You know. I think you know. Do you?”
Murdoch nodded. “Yeah.” He met my eyes and looked into them. I saw that he did know.
But then he looked away from me and got up. “Excuse me, Matt. I’ll be back in a minute or two. We’ll go on talking. I don’t mean to cut you off.” He left the room. I heard him blow his nose. I heard him using his cell phone, saying to someone that something had come up, he’d be there later on, and he’d call when he was on the way. I heard the water running in the bathroom sink.
I sat at his table. When he came back, I said quickly, before he could say anything himself, “Murdoch, look. There’s something specific I have to tell you. About her. It’s—it’s hard to say it. I’m embarrassed, but you need to know. Even though I won’t let it—I won’t let it happen, actually. I even told Nikki that.”
“What is it?” Murdoch had taken his abandoned coffee mug and dumped out its contents into the sink. I said what I had to say quickly, while his back was turned. I had rehearsed it in my mind so that I’d need as few words as possible.
“She told me s
he could accuse you of having molested me. If she did that, of course I’d say it wasn’t true, but I thought you should know she was thinking about it. As a way to hurt you.”
I looked at Murdoch when I finished. I was glad not to be able to see his face. What I could see was that his right hand had paused midair, just above the kitchen faucet. I counted five seconds while it hung there, suspended. Then it continued on its way, turning the faucet neatly on, holding the coffee mug under it for rinsing. Eventually, he turned the faucet off. I heard the soft clink of the coffee mug being put down in the sink.
Murdoch’s expression, when he did turn, was the twin of our mother’s in one of her worst rages. I even thought I saw, in his eyes, those same demons, fighting for dominance, before he got control over them again.
I realized that I had seen his demons before. In the Cumberland Farms store.
Then, weirdly, he grinned. It was the strangest smile I’ve ever seen in my life. I still don’t know exactly what he was thinking about, behind that smile. I just know now that it was only in part about us, and about what I had just told him. There’s so much I do not know about Murdoch, even now. He keeps secrets. But still, I think that was the moment. That was it. That was the very second when he—and this is an odd word, but the right one—engaged. I think that was the exact moment when he said yes to helping us.
And you see—this is the point I have to make: He didn’t commit to us because of what Nikki had done. He didn’t do it because of Rob and the smashed car windows and the black eye; or because of the nasty phone calls that I didn’t know about then. And it wasn’t because of what had or hadn’t happened between him and Nikki before, when they were together.
It was because of what I told him.
If I had kept my mouth shut, if I had not told Murdoch . . . what then?
I held my breath until he spoke.
“God help us,” he finally said, mildly enough. “That’s bad.”
I said then what I had said to my father. “We can’t be with her. We can’t stay there. It’s not safe.”
And then Murdoch said what I needed and wanted to hear, and it wasn’t, Things usually work out okay or Just pretend things are normal. “Yeah,” he said simply. “You’re right.”
“Oh,” I said. It was all I could say. “Oh.”
We sat awhile in silence.
“I’ll think about it all,” Murdoch said. “I don’t know how yet, but I’ll figure something out.” His voice was calm. “Just give me some time—oh, and your father’s and your aunt’s phone numbers. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. But to hear that he needed time and phone numbers wasn’t what I had expected. Disappointment filled me.
I had expected him to do something.
26
PROPERTY
I managed to slip into school late without much trouble. I could forge a decent please-excuse-Matthew note from Nikki whenever I needed to. But I was unable to concentrate that day in my classes. It was as if there was urgent music playing in my head: What will happen? What will happen now?
What would Murdoch do? All I knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to call state Social Services, because I insisted on that. “I don’t think too highly of them, actually,” was what Murdoch had said, to my relief. “They’ll be a last resort, but only that.” I told him that Aunt Bobbie and Ben were useless, but he shook his head. “I’ll meet them and judge for myself,” he said. And so, I let him overrule my doubt. I wondered what he would say to them. I wondered how soon he would come back to me and tell me they were useless after all. Would he insist on Social Services after that? Or would he do something? My stomach churned.
It didn’t feel normal at home that afternoon, even though I did my best to suppress what I was thinking and feeling. Callie was preoccupied. It turned out that Nikki had been right about her. (She had gotten her first period. I didn’t really want to know this, Emmy. You were the one who told me.) She was suffering from stomach cramps and was more sullen than I’d have believed possible; she spent the afternoon lying on her bed reading an Agatha Christie—although I never saw her turn a page—and I couldn’t get a single civil word out of her. You, meanwhile, had turned headstrong and talkative. You were the one who was worried about Murdoch that afternoon, the one who quizzed me about whether or not I’d seen him and if he was all right. And—it turned out—you were the one I had to be most careful with.
I didn’t want to tell even Callie about what Murdoch had said. Anyway, she was impossible to talk to while she was in this female mood of hers. So I hoarded the information and the hope. “Murdoch’s okay, it was Rob that got hurt, like we thought,” I said to you and Callie. I didn’t even mention the smashed truck windows; I didn’t want to make a long conversation out of it. When you kept on with your questions, I said, “Look, Em, that’s all I know,” and I pretended to do homework. But like Callie with her mystery novel, I didn’t turn many pages of my textbook about the Civil War.
“Can we call him?” you persisted, after a few minutes. “I need to talk to him.”
“No. He’s going away for a few days. He already left,” I lied. “He’s fine,” I added.
“But I want to see him,” you wailed.
“Too bad,” I said, under my breath. I don’t think you heard me. I debated telling you again not to talk about Murdoch in front of Nikki. I knew it would have to be done. But not now, I thought. Not without Callie to help.
I stared down at my history book. April, 1862. Battle of Shiloh. Tens of thousands of men died. Thirteen thousand of them were Union soldiers; eleven thousand were Confederate. I read the same paragraph over and over but I couldn’t seem to remember the numbers for more than a few seconds.
I found myself wondering again about Julie the neighbor—was she really Murdoch’s new girlfriend? Or a more casual friend? I tried telling myself it didn’t matter; that what mattered was Murdoch’s promise to help us. And as I thought about that, I realized that I believed it: Julie wasn’t important. If it wasn’t Julie with Murdoch, it would just be somebody else. We were on a new road with him now, and who he dated had nothing to do with it, nothing to do with us.
I found myself thinking that it was sort of the same as with Nikki. It had never mattered, except for Murdoch, who Nikki dated after she kicked Ben out. Men were always around, but they came and then they went. True, sometimes they were mean; sometimes we had to watch out for them. But still, fundamentally, they didn’t matter, not to me, and not, I thought, to Nikki. They didn’t belong to her the way we did. They weren’t her property.
Property. My mind lingered on that word. Property. Yes, that was the truth: We were Nikki’s property. We were—I looked down at my book about the Civil War—we were like her slaves. She owned us. The whip could come smashing down at any time, and there was nothing we could do about it except try to dodge; try to take care of each other.
Some slaves had run away. If I’d been on my own, I realized, I might have done that.
Behind me, you sneezed. “Matt,” you whined. “I’m bored! Why won’t you play with me?” You sidled up next to me and started trying to climb onto my lap.
I tried to ignore you as you leaned over and breathed into my face. I was filled with longing—to be on my own . . . not to need anybody at all, nobody’s help . . . not to have to beg . . .
The phone rang, startling all three of us.
“Matt, you get it,” Callie said to me over her shoulder, as she huddled deeper into her blankets.
“No, me,” you said, racing toward the living room. “Me, me, me!”
I went, too, but you got to the phone first. “Murdoch?” you said into it the second you got it to your mouth. “Is that you, Murdoch? This is Emmy!”
There was a strident note to your voice. I knew it was probably not Murdoch. What if it were Nikki? I tried to take the phone, but you twisted away from me and folded yourself over it. “Murdoch?” you said again, loudly. Then you were silent at last, listening. Your lower l
ip stuck out more and more. After a few seconds, wordlessly, you uncurled and handed the phone to me. You didn’t go far away, though, and you stuck your thumb in your mouth—a habit you’d stopped a few months back.
“Hello? This is Matthew,” I said uncertainly.
“Oh, good. Matt, it’s Aunt Bobbie. Um, listen. I’ll be there in half an hour, okay? I’ll come upstairs.”
“What’s going on?” I said. “What’s happened?” Aunt Bobbie rarely called, and rarely heaved herself upstairs to our apartment. “Is something wrong?” I added.
“Well, yes, but it’s going to be okay. She’s going to be just fine.”
“Just tell me, Aunt Bobbie,” I said. “This is about Mom?”
“Um, Matt? That man Murdoch—was Emmy expecting him to call? How strange. Anyway. He appears to have, well, hurt your mom, but I promise, she’s going to be absolutely fine, and he will pay. Men just can’t get away with that kind of thing nowadays. Beating up women. Your mother has already talked to the police and everything. And she’s going to be fine, I have to stress that. Just fine. So don’t worry, Matt. I’ll see you kids very soon. How about I bring ice cream? Chocolate chip?”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll be right there,” said Aunt Bobbie reassuringly.
“Okay. Bye.” I hung up. No, I thought. I don’t believe it. No. It’s not possible. It didn’t happen. He seemed so controlled today. He didn’t seem like he—
But I thought about what Aunt Bobbie had said. Maybe it was possible. Murdoch had been angry. I thought about the Cumberland Farms store. In that moment, Emmy, I didn’t know what he might have done.
I had this moment of clarity, though. My stomach clenched on me. I thought: But if he was going to do it, why hadn’t he actually done it?
I turned and saw you crouched down against the wall, eyes closed tightly. What had you heard from Aunt Bobbie? What had you understood? But there was nothing I could do for you or anyone right then. I walked past you and went to sit down in the living room. I stayed there and didn’t let myself think anything at all until Aunt Bobbie showed up.