Broken Harbor (41 page)

I needed to hear her say it. She said, “I was never fine. This one time I was digging a hole in the sand, little bucket and spade and everything all adorable, and at the bottom of the hole there was a face. Like a man’s face, all squashed up and making faces, like he was trying to get the sand out of his eyes and his mouth. I screamed and Mum came, but by then he was gone. And it wasn’t just at Broken Harbor, either. Once I was in my room and—”

I couldn’t listen to any more of this. “You had a great imagination. That’s not the same thing. All little kids imagine things. It wasn’t till after Mum died—”

“It was, Mikey. You didn’t know because when I was little you could just put it down to ‘Oh, kids imagine stuff,’ but it was always. Mum dying had nothing to do with it.”

“Well,” I said. My mind felt very strange, juddering like a city in an earthquake. “So maybe it wasn’t Mum dying, exactly. She’d been depressed all your life, off and on. We did our best to keep it away from you, but kids sense things. Maybe it would actually have been better if we hadn’t tried to—”

“Yeah, you guys did your best, and you know what? You did a great job. I hardly remember being worried about Mum ever, at all. I knew she got sick sometimes, or sad, but I didn’t have a clue that it was a big deal. It’s not because of that, the way I am. You keep trying to
organize
me, file me away all neat and make sense, like I’m one of your cases—I’m not one of your fucking
cases
.”

“I’m not trying to organize you,” I said. My voice sounded eerily calm, artificially generated somewhere far away. Tiny memories fell through my mind, blooming like flakes of flaming ash: Dina four years old and shrieking blue murder in her bath, clinging to Mum, because the shampoo bottle was hissing at her; I had thought she was trying to dodge having her hair washed. Dina between me and Geri in the back of the car, fighting her seat belt and gnawing her fingers with a hideous worrying sound till they were lumpy and purple and bleeding, I couldn’t even remember why. “I’m just saying of course it was because of Mum. What else would it be? You were never abused, I’d swear to that on my life, you were never beaten or starved or—I don’t think you ever even got a smack on the backside. We all loved you. If it wasn’t Mum, then why?”

“There isn’t any
why
. That’s what I mean, trying to organize me. I’m not crazy
because
anything. I just am.”

Her voice was clear, steady, matter-of-fact, and she was looking at me straight on, with something that could almost have been compassion. I told myself that Dina’s hold on reality is one-fingered at best, that if she understood the reasons why she was crazy then she wouldn’t be crazy to begin with. She said, “I know that’s not what you want to think.”

My chest felt like a balloon filling with helium, rocking me dangerously. My hand was clamped on the arm of my chair as if it could anchor me. I said, “If you believe that. That this just happens to you for no reason. How do you live with that?”

Dina shrugged. “Just do. How do you live with it when you have a bad day?”

She was slouching into the corner of the sofa again, drinking her wine; she had lost interest. I took a breath. “I try to understand why I’m having a bad day, so I can fix it. I focus on the positive.”

“Right. So if Broken Harbor was so great and you have all these great memories and everything’s so positive, then why is it wrecking your head going back there?”

“I never said it was.”

“You don’t need to say it. You shouldn’t be doing this case.”

It felt like salvation, to be having the same old fight, back on familiar ground, with that slantwise glitter waking in Dina’s eyes again. “Dina. It’s a murder case, just like all the dozens of others I’ve worked. There’s nothing special about it, except the location.”

“Location location location, what are you, an estate agent? This location is
bad
for you. I could tell the second I saw you the other night, you were all wrong; you smelled funny, like something burning. Look at you now, go look in mirrors, you look like something shat on your head and set you on fire. This case is fucking you up. Phone your work tomorrow and tell them you’re not doing it.”

In that instant I almost told her to fuck off. It astonished me, how suddenly and how hard the words slammed up against my lips. I have never, in all my adult life, said anything like that to Dina.

I said, when I could be sure that my voice was wiped empty of any hint of anger, “I’m not going to give up this case. I’m sure I do look like shit, but that’s because I’m exhausted. If you want to do something about that, stay put at Geri’s.”

“I can’t. I’m
worried
about you. Every second you’re out there thinking about that
location
, I can feel it making your head go bad. That’s why I came back here.”

The irony was enough to make anyone howl with laughter, but Dina was dead serious: bolt upright on the sofa, legs folded under her, ready to fight me all the way. I said, “I’m fine. I appreciate you looking out for me, but there’s no need. Seriously.”

“Yes there is. You’re just as much of a mess as I am. You just hide it better.”

“Maybe. I’d like to think I’ve put in enough work that I’m not actually a mess at this point, but who knows, maybe you’re right. Either way, the upshot is that I’m well able to deal with this case.”

“No. No way. You like thinking you’re the strong one, that’s why you love when I go off the rails, because it makes you feel all Mr. Perfect, but it’s bullshit. I bet sometimes when you’re having a bad day you hope I’ll show up on your doorstep talking crap, just so you’ll feel better about yourself.”

Part of the hell of Dina is that even when you know it’s rubbish, even when you know it’s the dark corroded spots on her mind talking, it still stings. I said, “I hope you know that’s not true. If I could help you get better by having an arm amputated, I’d do it like a shot.”

She sat back on her heels and thought about that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I would.”

“Awww,” Dina said, with more appreciation than sarcasm. She sprawled on her back on the sofa and swung her legs over the arm, watching me. She said, “I don’t feel good. Ever since I read those newspapers, things are sounding funny again. I flushed your jacks and it made a noise like popcorn.”

I said, “I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to get you back to Geri’s. If you feel like crap, then you’re going to want someone around.”

“I do want someone around. I want you. Geri makes me want to get a brick and hit myself in the head. One more day of her and I’ll do it.”

With Dina, you don’t have the luxury of taking anything as hyperbole. I said, “So find a way to ignore her. Take deep breaths. Read a book. I’ll lend you my iPod and you can block Geri out altogether. We can load it up with whatever music you want, if my taste isn’t trendy enough for you.”

“I can’t use earphones. I start hearing stuff and then I can’t tell if it’s in the music or inside my ears.”

She was banging one heel off the side of the sofa in a relentless, infuriating rhythm that jarred against the fluid sweep of the Debussy. I said, “Then I’ll lend you a good book. Take your pick.”

“I don’t need a good book I don’t need a DVD box set I don’t need a nice fucking cup of tea and a sudoku magazine. I need
you
.”

I thought of Richie at his desk, chewing a thumbnail and spell-checking his request form, of that desperate call for help in his voice; of Jenny in her hospital bed, wrapped in a nightmare that wasn’t going to end; of Pat, gutted out like a trophy animal, waiting in one of Cooper’s drawers for me to make sure he wouldn’t be stamped
Killer
in a few million minds; of his children, too young even to know what dying was. That surge of anger heaved up again, shoving at me. I said, “I know that. Right now, other people need me more.”

“You mean this Broken Harbor thing is more important than your family. That’s what you mean. You don’t even see how fucked-up that is, do you, you don’t even see that no normal guy in the world would
say
that, no one would say that unless he was obsessed with some hellhole place that was pumping shit into his brain. You know perfectly bloody well if you send me back to Geri’s then she’ll bore me till I lose my mind, and I’ll walk out and she’ll be going crazy worrying, but you don’t even care, do you? You’re still going to make me go back there.”

“Dina, I don’t have time for this shit. I’ve got, what, fifty-odd hours to charge this guy. In fifty-odd hours’ time I’ll do whatever you need, come get you from Geri’s at the crack of dawn, go to any museum you want, but until then, you’re right: you’re not the center of my universe. You can’t be.”

Dina stared, propped up on her elbows. She had never heard that whip- crack in my voice before. The gobsmacked look on her face swelled that balloon inside my chest. For a terrifying instant I thought I was going to laugh.

“Tell me something,” she said. Her eyes had narrowed: the gloves were coming off. “Do you sometimes wish I would die? Like when my timing is shit, like now. Do you wish I would just die? Do you hope someone’ll ring you in the morning and go, ‘I’m so sorry, sir, a train just splattered your sister’?”

“Of course I don’t want you to die. I’m hoping
you’ll
ring me in the morning and go, ‘Guess what, Mick, you were right, Geri isn’t actually a form of torture banned by the Geneva Convention, somehow I’ve survived—’”

“Then why are you acting like you wish I would die? Actually I bet you don’t want a train, you want it to be all
neat
, don’t you, all nicey-neat—how do you hope it? Hang myself, is that what you’d like, or an overdose—”

I didn’t feel like laughing any more. My hand was clenched around the wineglass, so tight I thought it would smash. “Don’t be bloody ridiculous. I’m acting like I want you to have a little self-control. Just enough to put up with Geri for two fucking days. You really think that’s too much to ask?”

“Why should I? Is this some kind of stupid
closure
thing, you fix this case it makes up for what happened to Mum? Because if it is then
puke
, I can’t even
stand
you, I’m going to puke all over your sofa right this—”

“This has fucking
nothing
to do with her. That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. If you can’t come up with anything that makes more sense than that, maybe you should keep your big yap shut.”

I hadn’t lost my temper since I was a teenager, not like this and definitely not at Dina, and it felt like doing a hundred down a motorway on six straight vodkas, immense and lethal and delicious. Dina was sitting up, leaning forward across the coffee table, fingers stabbing at me. “See? This is what I’m talking about.
This
is what this thing is doing to you. You never get mad at me, and now look at you, just look, the state of you, you want to hit me, don’t you? Say it, come on, how badly do you want to—”

She was right: I did, I wanted to slap her right across the face. Some fraction of me understood that if I hit her then I would stay with her, and that she knew it too. I put my glass down on the coffee table, very gently. “I’m not going to hit you.”

“Go on, go ahead, you might as well. What’s the difference? If you throw me away into Geri’s House of Hell and I run away and then I can’t come to you and I can’t hold it together and I end up jumping in the river, how is that better?” She was half on the coffee table, face shoved at me, right within arm’s reach. “You won’t give me one little slap because God no you’re too good for that, fuck forbid you might feel like the bad guy just once, but it’s OK to make me jump off a bridge, right, that’s fine, that’s just—”

A sound halfway between a laugh and a yell came out of me. “Sweet Jesus! I can’t begin to tell you how sick I am of hearing that. You think
you’re
going to puke? How about me, getting this shit shoved down my throat every time I bloody turn around?
You won’t take me to the Wax Museum, I think I’ll kill myself. You won’t help me move all my stuff out of my flat at four in the morning, I think I’ll kill myself. You won’t spend the evening listening to my problems instead of taking one last shot at saving your marriage, I think I’ll kill myself.
I know it’s my own fault, I know I’ve always caved the second you whipped out this crap, but this time: no. You want to kill yourself? Do it. You don’t want to, then don’t. It’s up to you. Nothing I do will make any difference anyway. So
don’t fucking dump it on my lap
.”

Dina stared at me, openmouthed. My heart was ricocheting off my ribs; I could barely breathe. After a moment she threw her wineglass on the floor—it bounced on the rug, rolled away in an arc of red like flung blood—got up and headed for the door, scooping up her bag on the way. She deliberately passed so close to me that her hip barged into my shoulder; she was expecting me to grab her, fight her to make her stay. I didn’t move.

In the doorway, she said, “You’d better find a way to tell your work to fuck off. If you don’t come find me by tomorrow evening, you’re going to be sorry.”

I didn’t turn around. After a minute the door slammed behind her, and I heard her give it a kick before she ran off down the corridor. I sat very still for a long time, gripping the arms of my chair to stop my hands shaking. I listened to my heart banging in my ears and to the hiss of the speakers after the Debussy ran out, listened for Dina’s footsteps coming back.

My mother almost took Dina with her. It was sometime after one in the morning, on our last night at Broken Harbor, when she woke Dina, slipped out of the caravan and headed for the beach. I know because I came in at midnight, dazzled and breathless from lying in the dunes with Amelia under a sky like a great black bowl full of stars, and when I eased the caravan door open the bar of moonlight lit up all four of them, rolled up tight and warm in their bunks, Geri snoring delicately. Dina turned and murmured something as I slid into my bed with my clothes still on. I had bribed one of the older guys to buy us a flagon of cider, so I was half drunk, but it must have been an hour before that stunned delight stopped humming in my skin and I could fall asleep.