Matt & Zoe (31 page)

On Monday afternoon, Gianni comes by the rigging. His right arm is in a sling. Tony’s face darkens, and he drops to the net followed by Mamma. A few moments later, the rest of us gather around.

“So what’s the news?” Tony asks.

The response is a head shake. “Doc says I have to take at least a month off the ropes.”

“A month!” Tony’s eyes flash with anger. “We’re playing in Springfield this weekend. You have to be ready by Friday.”

Mamma interjects. “Hush, Tony. If the doctor says he’s not ready, he’s not ready. I will not have somebody killed because of a foolish accident.” She glowers at Tony as she says the words. “If we can’t perform the show, we can’t do it. I won’t risk our family’s safety.”

An uncomfortable silence falls over us, and I realize that Messalina is looking directly at me.

I had only agreed to practice with them as a fill-in to help through the weekend.

I have nowhere to go this week anyway.

I don’t need to be at work. Zoe apparently wants nothing to do with me. Until I get things sorted out at work, I am free.

I roll my eyes up to the sky. “I can stay through the week.”

Mamma immediately responds. “You don’t have to do that, Matty.”

“It’s fine, Mamma.”

Mamma’s face softens. “I’m glad you’re with us.”

Messalina says, “Me too.”

Tony scowls. Then he stomps off.

That is it. I’ve had it. I don’t necessarily expect to be greeted like the prodigal son, but the barest of politeness would be appreciated. I start after Tony.

Messalina grabs at my arm. “Matty, let him go.”

“No. I want to talk to him.”

I shake her hand off and follow him. He doesn’t make fifteen feet before I grab his arm and spin him around.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” he snarls.

I back off, holding my hands slightly in the air. “I just want to know one thing, Tony. Why the hell are you so hostile to me? What did I do to you?”

“Fuck off,”

I sag in frustration. “I don’t get it. The least you can do is have the courtesy to tell me why you’re so pissed off.”

“It’s not enough that you’re a self-centered jerk?” He demands. “You were Papa’s favorite.
Matty, you’re going to be the catcher
.
Matty, you’re the steady one.
But then when Papa died, you flaked. Go off to college, do something else and leave the rest of us to work with strangers.” He makes a fist, extending his index finger and poking me in the chest. “I’ve been here every day. And you know what? We don’t need you. Go back to your girlfriend and your stupid job.”

The verbal attack staggers me. “Tony… It’s not like I left voluntarily. They threw me in jail.”

Tony’s face works in anger. “You think I don’t know that? All we heard before that was you screaming at him. Telling him to stop trying to control your life. Telling him to butt out. Telling them to go to hell. Is it any wonder people thought you killed him?”

I hear a gasp behind me, Mamma’s voice. “Tony, you know that’s not—”

I hold up a hand flat behind me to signal stop. “No, Mamma. Let him say it. Do you think that’s true, Tony? Do you think I killed Papa?”

Tony slams his palms against my chest, knocking me back. I stagger trying to keep my footing. His next words come in a choked shout. “No! He died anyway. We lost everything. He was gone, we left the big top, everything fell apart. And you didn’t bother to come back and help us put it back together. The minute you got out of that jail, you ran away. I want to know why.”

A maelstrom of emotion floods through me. There are a thousand things I could say, and there’s nothing I can say. I struggle to articulate a sentence, and he shouts at me again. “Why? It was bad enough that we lost Papa, but we lost you, too. Why?”

The words are ripped out of me. “Because I was ashamed. I was so damned ashamed. The last thing Papa ever heard me say was,
I wish you would die
. He didn’t hear me say, I love you. That’s the last thing. I couldn’t save him! I tried! I couldn’t hold on, he was a dead weight and I lost him!”

I’m horrified as the last words come ripping out of my chest.

I don’t see the fist coming. I hear a howl of rage from Tony, then my vision goes black. This time I’m knocked off my feet. Almost before I hit the ground, Tony shouts, “I’m sorry!”

As he shouts the words I can hear anguish in his voice. He drops to his knees next to me and grabs my shoulders and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. I didn’t… I’m sorry I hated you. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault we lost him, but I hated you anyway.”

I’m shocked by the words, but not nearly as shocked as I am by the tears which are freely running out of his eyes now. Tony grabs me by the shoulders and throws his arms around me. In a rough voice, he whispers, “Forgive me, brother?”

I feel an overwhelming flow of grief as he asks the question. Not just grief. Exhaustion. Love. Release. Grace.

I whisper. “Of course I forgive you. Can you forgive me?”

He nods, unable to speak.

Then I feel another set of arms around me. Mamma. “My boys. I’m so glad you’re home.”

I'll be there (Matt)

Tomorrow morning, the circus is packing up and moving to Springfield for three nights. Despite my extreme reservations, I’ve agreed to perform with the family. The reservations are no longer emotional… merely practical. I’ve been out of the ring too long. But for the last six days, we’ve practiced the routine to the point of perfection. I can still catch. I can still fly. I’m sore as hell. I’m exhausted. But I’m doing it.

I’ve tried to reach Zoe all week with multiple calls. No luck.

I’m going to have to go in person. She told me to stay away, but I won’t do it without at least some kind of explanation. I deserve that much. On Tuesday I debate just leaving and going to see her. Instead, I decide to give her a few days to cool down. She can’t sustain this kind of rage. Can she?

After dinner, Mamma says, “We’ll practice one hour after dinner tonight. I want you to get a lot of rest. We’ll move in the morning, go through the routine twice tomorrow afternoon when the big top goes up, then perform tomorrow night.” I nod. That actually sounds fine.

I stand up from the table and stretch, and that’s when my phone rings.

That’s odd.
The caller is Peggy Young. I answer it immediately. “Hello? Peggy?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with this bullshit suspension?” She launches into the question without any preamble.

I sink into a seat. My mother gives me an odd, concerned look. “I don’t know… I think I needed a few days away. And besides, what’s the point?”

I can hear the anger in her voice. “What’s the point? The point isn’t just you, Matt. It’s that the superintendent can’t just retaliate against people who speak up. He’s abusing his power, and you are letting him.”

I wince. “I don’t know about all that…”

“I do. If you let him get away with this, Matt, then someone else will be next.”

I sag in my seat. There’s no doubt in my mind that she is correct about that. “I’ve been taking care of some personal business for the last several days. Maybe I’ve been avoiding it… What can we do about it?”

“How long is your suspension supposed to be?”

I shrug automatically, even though she can’t see me. “I don’t know.”

She mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like a string of curses. “I’ll fix him. Meet me at the superintendent’s office tomorrow. 11 o’clock.”

I think about it for a few second. We’re not due to practice tomorrow until two in the afternoon—I could get to South Hadley in the morning, meet with her, then it’s twenty or so minutes back to Springfield. “Hold on a second,” I say. I set the phone down and say to Mamma, “I’m going to need to go home tomorrow morning. I’ll meet you guys for practice in the afternoon.”

She nods. “Do what you have to do Matty.”

I put the phone back to my ear. “I’ll be there.”

Chapter Twenty-One

How do you heal from that? (Zoe)

In my dream, the phone rings off the hook. It must be Matt calling, or Chase. Nicole is across the alley from me, crouched close to the ground with her rifle against her chest. Her helmet is slightly askew, the night vision goggles raised up so that I can see her eyes. The exposed skin at her neck and face is dirty, and there a bloodstain on the sleeve of her uniform.

“Turn it off,” she whispers, the words coming out like bullets. “They’ll hear.”

I try to turn it off, but I can’t. It rings again. I wince and so does she. Inside the house next us someone is shouting—the squad is in there clearing the house. They don’t want us in there – not because we’re women, but because we’re
police
. I hear a thump followed by a scream. I can hear scrabbling in the sand down the alley, but I can’t see anything. Someone is coming.

The phone rings again.

Terror rocks through me as I hear an explosion of movement at the end of the alley, followed by the distinct sound of a Kalashnikov firing. Nicole and I drop to our stomachs and return the fire, but then she’s gone and I’m alone in the alley with my rifle and the insurgents. Tracers fly back and forth, then a window that wasn’t there a moment ago opens up on the side of the house. My father leans out, a disapproving frown on his face, and he says, “If you’d gone to college like I wanted, then you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

His face accuses me.

That’s when I hear Jasmine scream. Where is she? I search the darkness but she’s nowhere to be found. The screaming seems to come from outside the alley beyond the insurgents. I pick up my rifle and charge toward them firing blindly. One falls, then another, and the others back away, then somehow I’m through them without getting hurt and I’m on College Street near the Village Commons. Matt is there, sitting at the table in front of the Yarde House, and he’s whispering in the ear of the Japanese girl Chase was with. I stop in place, staring at him in shock, not understanding how she can be here. Then Jasmine screams again and I can’t stay here. I turned away from that and run toward the sound of her voice.

My eyes pop open and I am wide awake. My phone is plugged in on my nightstand, screen lit up and alarm sounds coming from it. I roll over and press snooze. Then I lay on my back.

Oh, that was a
nightmare.
I lay there struggling to breathe.

The nightmare is still clear in my mind. Running through the sand. I shake my head to shut out the dream. I have too much to do to allow myself to indulge in such things.

I sit up, planting my feet on the floor before I start to fall back asleep. I dress in a pair of tough jeans and a flannel shirt, then head downstairs and start the coffee pot. Once that’s going, I slip outside and walk in the cold darkness towards the barn.

As soon as I slide the door open, the horses begin to snort. Mono whinnies and paws at the floor, then snorts again.

“All right, all right, relax.”

The horse responds with another loud snort, then kicks the side of the stall with a loud bang.

“Hey!” I shout. “Knock it off!”

Mono snorts again, but stops kicking. I load three bales of hay on the back of the tractor, then ride it out onto the pasture, breaking the hay up into small bunches that I spread across the fields. The horses will still graze on the grass, but now that the first frost has come and gone, there’s little nutritional value left and their diet has to be supplemented. As I’m finishing spreading the hay, I glanced toward the house and I can see that Jasmine’s light is on. In the last few weeks we’ve fallen into a routine. She’ll come downstairs and join me in the barn in a moment, leading the horses into the pasture while I muck out the stalls.

Once that’s finished and the horses are out in the field, both of us head inside and shower. Jasmine barely speaks a word this morning. She’s barely spoken the entire last week, and when she has she’s stumbled and stammered over her words. Losing Matt was a giant step backward in her recovery.

At least I’m hoping to divert her tonight—Nicole bought tickets to the circus. Thank God she’s not bringing Tyler. Just us three girls. Thank God for good friends.

As I shower, my mind runs back over the dream. My father leaning out the window and chiding me that I should have gone to college instead of joining the Army. Some days, I don’t think much about how my dad felt about my choices. Others, I try not to care—I made the decisions I felt I needed to. On the worst days, I think about my father and his disappointment in me and it breaks my heart that I can’t do anything to change it. I remember how awkward and non-communicative he had been at my basic training graduation. He’d barely looked at me.

Someday soon I need to just clear out the garage. Not even look at his things because God knows what I’ll find in there. After all, my dad was a prolific diarist. I don’t think I could stand to read his thoughts about me not going to college. And what’s so damned frustrating about that is that now that I am going to college—and I’m starting to think I might do okay—he’s not around to see it.

I need to stop dwelling on this, I have too much to do. Instead, I head downstairs and scramble some eggs. When I was in school I never paid much attention to breakfast, mostly cereal and toast in the mornings. The Army taught me that breakfast makes a bigger difference in my day than anything else. So I’ve made a habit of making a good one for me and Jasmine. When she gets downstairs two plates are at the table with strips of bacon, eggs, toast and jelly. I savor the taste of my coffee for a moment before I begin to eat.

Jasmine doesn’t say a word through the meal. I try to engage her—asking her about school yesterday and what they have planned for today. She shrugs. “I don’t know. We—we have a substitute every day now.” We continue to eat in an uncomfortable silence until it’s time for her to go outside for the bus. As she throws her backpack on, she says “You—you—you…” She screws up her face in frustration, then bursts out “You don’t have to wait with me. I’m old enough to catch the bus by myself.”