The Rules of Survival (14 page)
Read The Rules of Survival Online
Authors: Nancy Werlin
And I decided to take a leap of faith.
I said bluntly to Aunt Bobbie, “I was with Murdoch McIlvane this morning. I cut school to go talk to him because, well, I thought she might try to hurt him in some way. I was with him, talking, until nearly noon. So, if my mother says this morning was when it happened, it couldn’t have.”
“Oh,” said Aunt Bobbie. “Oh, my.” She bit her lip. Then she sighed. “Oh, that does sound like my sister.”
I stared at my aunt. She seemed entirely willing to believe me.
Slowly, then, excitement filled me. Had Nikki lied to the police about an assault? And what if I just said so to them? Provided an alibi for Murdoch? Maybe
they
would believe me, too. What would happen then? To Murdoch? To her? To us?
they
would believe me, too. What would happen then? To Murdoch? To her? To us?
28
GET RID OF HER
Nikki eventually came home that night with a heavily bruised face and a fractured right forearm that had been splinted. She was smiling and pleased with herself, chatty, hungry, attacking two slices of cold pizza right away. But her good mood didn’t last past the next morning, when—after consulting with my new, unexpected ally, Aunt Bobbie—I went to the police station. I had gotten the name of the right policeman, an Officer Brooks, from simply listening to Nikki. Aunt Bobbie, clearly scared but also somehow righteous, went with me.
I was scared, too, but I was also full of hope. Emmy, you see, I thought I had the means to get rid of our mother right there. It wasn’t anything like I had expected, but I thought I could get her put in jail for a while. I wasn’t sure for what—bearing false witness or lying or trying to frame someone; something like that. Claiming somebody had done something criminal that he hadn’t actually done must be some kind of crime, I thought.
But I was wrong. The Massachusetts system of police and courts wasn’t going to bother seriously with someone like Nikki. She just wasn’t bad enough . . . except to me. Except to us.
It had all come to a head inside me. I knew, for the first time, fully and consciously, what I really wanted. The words beat in me like a drum.
Get rid of her. Get rid of her. Get rid of her.
This was different from what I had always thought before, and what I had told Murdoch I wanted:
Get us away from her
.
Get us away from her
.
I don’t really want to remember much about the next couple of weeks, so I will just state the facts. The police—particularly Officer Brooks—were offhandedly kind to me. Officer Brooks had this casual just-doing-a-job quality that you never see in the cops on TV. He was not intense and committed. Nikki wasn’t a big deal to him. She was just a minor wacko; some woman who got her new boyfriend to beat her up so she could blame her old boyfriend for abuse. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before, and he sorted her, and me, out quickly, efficiently, and with indifference.
Nikki’s story was that Murdoch had assaulted her mid-morning. My story was that I’d been with him then, and so that was impossible. Murdoch’s story was the same as mine; except it turned out that when he was initially questioned, he didn’t say that I was with him. Trying to protect me from Nikki’s anger if she found out, I figured. “He said he thought her story would fall down some other way,” Officer Brooks told me.
Without too much difficulty, after questioning Nikki, the police found Rob—whose full name was Robert T. Borodetsky. The whole business from before, of Nikki asking Rob to assault Murdoch, and Murdoch fighting back, came out.
“She told me I owed it to her after that,” Rob said, according to Aunt Bobbie, who went to Boston Municipal Court to hear the trial that took place before the district judge. “She said that the only way to get her ex-boyfriend was if she did it on her own. So I did hit her, yes. I just did what she asked. She told me it didn’t even hurt.” Rob was not a very smart man. On the other hand, we never heard a peep about him again, so maybe he was smarter than I give him credit for.
I wasn’t asked to be at the trial or talk to the judge. All I had to do was sign a statement. I would have gone to the trial, but Officer Brooks told me not to, and I didn’t dare disobey. Murdoch didn’t go, either; just Nikki and Rob, and Aunt Bobbie went only because I begged her to.
When it was over, Rob got five days in jail, and Nikki got a lecture from the judge and some kind of probation involving anger management counseling.
Privately, I had gotten some counseling, too, from Officer Brooks. He took me aside. “Kid.” Again, he was not unkind, just blunt. “What were you thinking, hanging out with your mother’s ex-boyfriend? There’s no reason to do that. Just let your mom know you love her. Okay?”
I didn’t answer him. He was just giving me another variant on
Go back to normal
. I wondered about Murdoch’s promise to figure something out. I wondered if that was still on. He hadn’t called me, and he didn’t for some time afterward.
Go back to normal
. I wondered about Murdoch’s promise to figure something out. I wondered if that was still on. He hadn’t called me, and he didn’t for some time afterward.
I didn’t call or go see him, either. At first, I was waiting for him to contact me. And then when he didn’t, I couldn’t be the one to call. Not this time. I suddenly was sick of the way I’d obsessed over him. He couldn’t help. He didn’t want to, not really. And it was impossible to help us, even if he did want to. Nobody and nothing could help, unless God struck Nikki with a thunderbolt.
My tentative new understanding, or whatever it was, with Aunt Bobbie didn’t comfort me much. She was better than nothing, but she wasn’t Murdoch. She wasn’t the dream. I still didn’t think much of her, you see.
There were two more little pieces of fallout. The first one was that Murdoch got a restraining order against Nikki. The important part of it was a no-contact clause; she was not supposed to telephone him, write to him, or send anyone else to talk to him or call him on her behalf. She was also supposed to stay physically at least one hundred yards away. Of course, this made her furious.
The second piece of fallout was that Nikki now hated me, and showed it at every opportunity. At least the fact that I was now the prime target was good news for Callie and for you. Especially for you, Emmy. I was worried about you. You had gotten a little wild, and very defiant. If not for the fact that our mother was focused on me, she would have noticed.
Apart from that, though, as far as I knew, nothing had changed, even though I had been believed, and not only by Murdoch, but by Aunt Bobbie, by the police, and by that judge.
Emmy, I remember taking you to the park. It was right after I finally understood that nothing was going to change in our lives after all. I remember pushing you on a swing. You pumped your feet furiously, fiercely. “Matt!” you yelled. “Push more!” But your swing was going too fast, too high, and I was going to grab it, to force you to slow down and be safe. And then, I didn’t. Instead, I stepped out of the way. I watched you and wondered for several endless minutes if it would be best for you if the swing were to fly over the top, if you were to fall and crack your head open and die, so you didn’t have to grow up with Nikki in charge.
29
ALLIES
Winter came. I was now fourteen and a half, Callie was thirteen, and you were six and a half.
Nikki had gotten weirder and weirder after the whole Rob business ended with Murdoch getting a restraining order against her. In Massachusetts, anyway, restraining orders are nearly worthless. If a person—say an ex-husband or an ex-boyfriend—really wants to hurt you, or kill you, he won’t stop because of a piece of paper. People don’t know what else to do, though, if they’re scared, so they go to court and get the restraining order, knowing that a true wacko won’t care.
Our mother, Nicole Marie Walsh, was a true wacko. I know that I was obsessed with Murdoch, too. But nothing I did could compare to our mother.
Nikki had taken some sick leave from work. She had that fractured arm and couldn’t use the computer, she said. I was at this point getting the silent treatment from her. She would stare at me every time we happened to be in the same room, and then she would point to the door to indicate that I should leave, even if I had been in the room first.
I know that doesn’t sound so bad, Emmy. But maybe you remember a little about how she could be. I knew she was waiting, until her counseling sessions and probation were over with, or maybe until Aunt Bobbie wasn’t around as much as she suddenly was. Nikki’s contemptuous pointing was by no means going to be my only punishment for betraying her. It was just what she was starting out with.
More would come. The silence wasn’t the clearest sign that Nikki was going around the bend, any more than the new, demonic look in her eyes was. The first real sign came on the Monday her splint came off, when she was supposed to go back to work, and didn’t. She didn’t call in sick, either. She just stayed home, sitting in the big green overstuffed chair in our living room, wrapped in her green and red silk dragon robe, not watching TV, not listening to music, not talking. Just staring into space and, very occasionally, smiling. At one point, she laughed out loud at some private thought.
“Mom?” said Callie tentatively.
“Leave me alone,” said Nikki. “I’m thinking.”
She thought all day. She thought again the next day. And then she thought each day for the rest of the week. She’d get up early, as if she were going to work. She’d shower and put on her makeup and then get back in her robe. She’d fix breakfast—only for herself. And then she’d go sit in her green chair. She’d be there when we left for school. She’d still be there when we came home.
The people from her work called. They left messages.
Nikki, where are you? Please call.
Nikki, your doctor says you’re fine to come in. Are you aware that you’ve used up all your personal days and sick days? Please call.
We need an office manager, Nikki. If you don’t get in touch, we’re going to have to terminate you.
She ignored the messages. I’m not even sure she listened to them all; some of them were still marked “new” when I heard them.
That week passed, and the next week, too, and then finally a letter arrived saying that she was being fired from her job, with eight weeks’ severance pay. She opened the letter, scanned it, and then took out the check, folding it in half and sticking it in the pocket of her robe. She then tossed the letter onto the kitchen counter. She got dressed and left the apartment, again without saying anything. But this was the first time she’d gone out in over three weeks, except for the times she’d had to go see her anger management counselor.
The letter was left behind for Callie to read, and then to show to me—I had been pointed firmly out of the kitchen earlier. A couple of hours later, when Aunt Bobbie got home, I went downstairs to show it to her.
“She just got this?” Aunt Bobbie said after reading it.
“Today’s mail,” I said. “Do you think she’s depressed? Is that why she didn’t call them or anything?”
“I guess,” said Aunt Bobbie doubtfully. “Maybe I’ll call that counselor of hers. I have the name and number written down someplace. It seems like the counselor should know about this.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Eight weeks’ severance. That’s generous,” said Aunt Bobbie.
“Yeah,” I said. “She usually gets two.”
Nikki had been fired twice before. She always found another job. Aunt Bobbie said that Nikki was actually good, when she wanted to be, at directing messages and organizing stuff for an office. She was very efficient, very practical, when she was focused on it, which she always was when she first got a job. So, I didn’t really think it was a big deal. She’d get another job in the end, even if the severance pay meant she wouldn’t begin looking for at least two months.
“Well,” said Aunt Bobbie, “you guys want to come down here for dinner? I have some frozen lasagna we could warm up.”
I was dying to get out of Nikki’s apartment. “Sure. I’ll just bring down cereal for Emmy,” I said. I didn’t find out until much later that, the second I closed the door behind me, Aunt Bobbie picked up the phone to call Murdoch and tell him about Nikki losing her job.
They were already . . . not friends, exactly. But allies. They were talking regularly, all those weeks during which I thought Murdoch had forgotten us.
30
NOWHERE TO GO
Then one day, Nikki exploded.
When I got home from school she was her sitting on the floor of the living room renewing her toenail polish. She pointed at me with the brush from her polish, and I hastily left the room. But the tension had mounted—I sensed it—and I stayed in our room for the remainder of the afternoon, doing homework and not even talking to Callie or to you. Something was going to happen, I could feel it.
Just after seven that evening, it did. Even though I was hungry, I’d stayed in our room while Callie took you to put together some dinner. I listened to the murmuring of your voices.
I felt her before I saw her. She had come up to the bedroom like a cat and nudged open the door, which had been left an inch ajar. I didn’t know how long she had been standing in the doorway, watching my back as I sat at the desk hunched over a biology book.
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