Watch You Die (29 page)

“Angela, we don’t look alike. They won’t believe I’m you.”

“Open my wallet. See? That driver’s license? My old hair, back when I had it straightened and used to color it brown. This style’s better for me, no?” She shook her black curls so they bounced around her shoulders.

“Yes. It makes you look young.”

“
Thank you
. So. Slide out that license, okay? When we get there, I’ll park and won’t need it to drive until after you’re all done.”

“How long is the class?”

“Three hours.”

“You’re going to wait in the city all that time? Angela—”

“Don’t worry about me; I got plans. My mother-in-law’s got the kids until dinner and I’m going to have my day on the town.
Alone
.”

Right: she had five kids. Spending a few hours wandering around Manhattan by herself was a vacation for a mother of small children.

“After, if you want, we can go out to lunch.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to do stuff like that.”

“You can go back to your jail when I’m through with you. Meantime, trust me, I know how to shoot this thing, and soon so will you. Good enough, anyway, to get you through a pinch. By the way – do
not
mention this to my husband.”

“I won’t.”

She dropped me off on 20th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in front of a narrow eleven-story limestone building. The front was ornamented with the kind of elegant detail common on the city’s old buildings and unheard of on the new ones.

“Pick you up here at one, OK? Wait in the lobby until you see me pull up. There’s a doorman.”

And so, instead of applying for a permit, I sort-of had one along with a fake ID and a gun. Angela had the confidence of a warrior. But what if they arrested me for false possession?

They didn’t. Once I’d stepped off the elevator into the basement shooting range – a gritty space that was host to the grittiest intentions – I was signed into the class with only the most cursory look at my (Angela’s) ID and permit. I put them back in my purse, making a small show of sliding her license into my wallet, and proceeded as directed to Range D.

Doors along the bright hallway were lettered from A–F. Six shooting galleries, holding ten shooters
apiece
. This morning Range D was devoted to the “New to Shooting” class: myself, four other women of varying ages and races, and two youngish gayish men who seemed to be friends.

Our instructor was Gary, who introduced himself as “an NRA certified instructor”. He looked like one, too: pot-bellied and beefy-faced – I hadn’t known this kind of man existed in Manhattan. He explained the mechanics of guns, what the magazine was, how the safety worked, all the physical elements of the weapons we held shakily, each of us, in our hands. Then he pointed to the wall where a poster listed the three most important rules about guns and told us that this was our new religion.

RULES OF GUN SAFETY

ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe

direction.

ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.

ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

It was printed in a dated font that was yellowed and curled at the edges.

Gary handed us each a pair of safety glasses and ear protectors that looked like bulky headphones. Then we were separated in booths with individual
targets
twenty-five feet ahead. I had wondered if we’d be shooting at human silhouettes, like in the movies, on the assumption that none of us were here with the intention of weekend deer hunting in the woods of Maine. But for us crowd-addled city folk some wise manager had chosen a simple shape, a circle, in layered rings that passed through descending shades of grey until they contracted into a black dead-center bull’s-eye. It was a good, plain, crisp piece of graphic design, not too evocative, which I imagined was the point.

The moment the red light turned on above the row of targets, we all started shooting. Silenced by the headphones, the shots sounded like thuds. Each time I shot Angela’s gun my arm jerked back convulsively and the impact sent reverberations throughout my body. The muscles in my shooting arm soon ached. But three hours later I had not only grown used to the smell of burning metal but was hitting near enough the bull’s-eye to feel confident that I could use the thing if I had to. My shooting was rough but I essentially understood how to handle the gun.

Angela was waiting in the van when I emerged into the lobby just after one o’clock. I got into the passenger’s side, feeling elated.

“That was
great
.”

“You see? It’s easy once you get the hang of it.”

I handed her back her license and permit but kept the gun in my purse.

“Lunch in Brooklyn or do you feel better staying in the city?”

“Angela, could we take a detour? I need to say goodbye to my mother. She’s in a nursing home uptown. She’s got Alzheimer’s.”

Her black eyes steadied on me. She nodded. “You bet. My dad? Alzheimer’s took him a little bit at a time. We finally lost him last year. You need this like a hole in the head right now, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question so she didn’t phrase it as one. “West side or east?”

“West Seventy-fourth Street and West End.”

She got us there in fifteen minutes and maneuvered into a parking spot around the corner after another car slipped out. I realized that she intended to come up with me and decided not to argue her out of it; it would have been wasted breath, anyway. Angela didn’t prevaricate or doubt herself; she made up her mind and took action. I liked that about her.

Lunchtime had just ended and I looked for my mother in the common room, expecting to find her by her favorite window. She wasn’t there. In the hall on my way to her room I ran into Nancy, the home’s day manager.

“Darcy! Nice to see you. Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”

“He didn’t—”

“No. Don’t worry about that. Security here is very good.”

“Things OK with Mom?”

“When did you last see her?”

“Friday; my usual visit. She was pretty out of it.”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss with you. She’s been in and out these past weeks, as you know, but the last few days she’s gone farther out. I just wanted you to be prepared.”

“Thanks, Nancy. I appreciate it.”

“It was inevitable.”

“I know.”

“It’s just that sometimes families don’t really believe that it’s not a matter of
if
.”

When she said that, Angela put her hand on my shoulder. The warmth of her touch startled me into an unexpected thought: I had not, in fact, been as prepared as I thought I’d been. Deep down I
had
thought it was if, not when, my mother’s mind relinquished all ties to the life we had shared. But Nancy understood this and so did Angela. I felt heartsick as I entered my mother’s room and found her sitting in the armchair in the corner, staring into the middle space of something I couldn’t see.

“Hi, Mom.”

She had no reaction.

“This is Angela; she’s a friend of mine.”

The corners of my mother’s mouth curled. “Friends are like gold but they don’t fit in your pocket.”

Angela and I glanced at each other and smiled.

“Mom.” I pulled a chair close to her and reached to take her hand. “I’m Darcy, your daughter.”

“Darcy was the name of my favorite doll.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I had to leave her.”

“Mom. Listen: I have to go away for a while.”

“Alone in the doll crib Mama had bought me.”

“Just for a while, until … well, until …”

“She has to take care of some important business,” Angela said. “Then she’ll be back.”

“That’s right, Mom. I’ll be back, definitely.”

“If we go together, it may be dangerous. But better to stay together, yes?”

“Mom? Where are you?”

“We
must
leave before the transfer. Are you coming, Rose?”

OK: I would be Rose. “Yes.”

“Marta?”

And Angela would be Marta. “Yes.”

“Wait until sunrise,” my mother whispered, “and go to the latrine one at a time. We’ll meet by Block Fourteen, where the dog gave birth last week. I noticed a dip in the ground where the mud was soft.”

“OK, Eva,” I said.

“Be careful, girls.”

“We will,” Angela said, moving closer.

We sat before my mother, taking the journey with her. She had always refused to talk to me about her escape from the camp. Now, she had forgotten, or forsaken, that level-headed resistance. She was back there, preparing to leave.

“Me first. I’m oldest. I’ll dig a tunnel in the mud and make a passage. Rose follows. Then Marta.
As quietly as you can
.”

She took a series of deep breaths, clenching her fists, squeezing her eyes, her supple lids fanning into long folds of loose skin. Then she held her breath and she was burrowing in the mud beneath a fence. She concentrated so hard I could see her, eleven years old, determined to get to the other side.

And then her entire body startled as if she had heard a loud sound. “No, Rose! Do not go back for her!
Come
.”

Her eyes fell shut again and her breathing accelerated. “Faster, Rosie. Not so slow!” They were running. Running away from the camp. Marta was no longer with them. And their feet were cold; my mother was curling her toes inside her fleece slippers, rubbing her feet together. Remembering.

“Don’t stay so close to me!” she whispered savagely. “Run until you get into the woods. I’ll meet you there.”

She seemed to pause but I could see her: moving, hitting her stride on the frozen ground. And then, again, she startled. It was the same way a baby startled, suddenly, flinging her arms out, eyes snapping open.

Now as she ran she cried and the tears streamed down her face. She didn’t wipe them because they froze right away. I could see her girl’s face glistening with crystals of ice as she ran and ran toward the woods, alone, for now both Rose and Marta were dead.

“No going back,
no going back
.” She spoke the words mechanically, like a mantra. “Get away. Faster.
No going back
.”

“Mom,” I cried. “I can’t leave you.”

“Save yourself; leave them behind.”

“I’ll be back. I promise.”

“No going back.”

“How did you survive that, Mom? How did you survive? Tell me!”

“Forget them. They’re gone. Save yourself.”

She leaned her head against the soft cushion of the chair and fell asleep. And I saw her: a flying angel, sprawled in the snow in the woods. She had made it; I knew that much about her, because she was here to tell the story. But would she ever tell me the rest of the story? (Would I be back in time?) What happened between that day and the day she
saw
my father seven years later in Manhattan? The way she always told it, her life began the moment they recognized each other across a crowded subway in 1952. But now there was also this: a frantic run through the snow, shots fired, a trail of dead friends. She had carried them in her mind all this time, never speaking of them until now: Marta and Rose. And what had become of Lara and Dolly? That question infused the goodbye kiss I settled on the yielding skin of my mother’s sunken, sleeping cheek.

Marta, Rose, Lara, Dolly
. Four little girls whose lives had been interrupted by history and yet were vividly alive today in my mother’s distant memory.

Angela and I left my mother asleep in the snow in the woods in Poland in the winter of 1945. We didn’t speak on our way back to the van. She drove us onto the West Side Highway, heading downtown toward Brooklyn. I didn’t have to ask if she planned on taking me all the way home; she had come this far for me, why wouldn’t she complete the journey?

Only when we were all the way at the southern tip of Manhattan did we break the silence – passing the gaping hole, now a construction site, where the Twin Towers had once stood.

“Angela, do you think it’s easier to get lost in a crowd or someplace remote and hard to reach?”

“If he finds you on a desert island, honey, you’re cooked. I say it’s easier to hide in a crowd.”

“I think you’re right. We should go to a city.”

But which one? I’d liked the idea of going overseas, really far away, but I’d never get across an international border with a gun. We would have to stay in this country and travel with cash so Joe couldn’t find a way to track us down. We would lay low, living the old-fashioned way,
unplugged
from any and all cyber connections he might use to trace us. Cash, pay phones, no set plans. Like fugitives. I would try to convince Nat we were embarking on an adventure, not running for our lives.

Tomorrow morning at nine, as soon as the bank opened and I could withdraw a significant amount of cash in traveler’s checks, we would leave. Tonight I would pack – and say goodbye to Rich.

The van pulled to a stop in front of my house. It was almost four o’clock; Nat would already be home.

“I hope you don’t hit traffic on your way back to Long Island.” I leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Thanks for today. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me.”

“You don’t have to. Send us a postcard, OK?”

“Promise.”

She waited until I was inside the house. As I turned off the alarm, locked myself in and rearmed
the
alarm, I heard the van roar away. And then something occurred to me: if Nat was home, why had the alarm been on? Had he actually remembered to rearm it when he came in, as I’d asked? I hadn’t expected him to fall so quickly into step with the new vigilance plan I had laid out before school that morning.

“New rules, Nat,” I’d said over breakfast. “Listen up.”

His milk-dripping spoon of cereal stopped midway to his mouth. He lifted his eyes from the article he was reading in the Arts section of the newspaper and looked at me grudgingly. I had interrupted him
again
.

“Sorry, sweetie, but this is really important. Are you listening?”

He nodded. Ate the spoonful of cereal. Kept his eyes on me because he knew I would not relent until he heard me out.