Always (46 page)

“Done it a hundred times when they were infants. Besides, I could always put the light on.”

“You could.”

“But I shouldn’t?”

“Up to you. If you leave it off, you have an advantage: you keep your night vision, and if you’ve memorized where everything in your house is, an intruder won’t be able to find their way around as easily as you.”

“Okay.”

“So you put on your robe, you check your kids. Then what?”

“I dunno. Depends.”

I smiled. Gold star. “On what?”

“Well . . .” She put her hands behind her head. “I guess I could go check the rest of the house.”

“And leave your kids sleeping and alone upstairs?”

“It’s not upstairs. All one level.”

“At one end?” She nodded. “Then your job by this time next week: figure out the most efficient way to sweep your house, outwards from where your kids are, to keep yourself between them and harm. Assuming that’s your top priority.”

"Of course it is!”

“Right, then. And you should also think about what you’d say to your kids if you had to wake them and tell them there’s someone in the house.” All the mothers on the floor looked sick. Luz, what would I tell Luz? I made a note to spend some time thinking about the children issue. “Tonya, what’s on your bedside table?”

“A clock—”

“What kind?”

“Too small to beat someone on the head with.”

“Could you throw it?”

“I . . . Well, I guess I could.”

“What else?”

“Books, usually. And a pen or two.”

"Good for stabbing at the throat or eye,” I said. "But could you reach out in the dark and find them, precisely?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Excellent. What else?”

She looked faintly embarrassed. “Usually three, four mugs of half-drunk tea. I take it to bed and then I fall asleep, and when I get up in the morning I’m too much in a hurry to—”

“Could you find those?”

“Not sure.”

“Practice.”

“I could throw them?”

“Yes. Cold liquid is a shock to the system, especially if it’s unexpected. But imagine you’ve just woken up and you’re lying there. You’re not sure if you’ve heard anything or not. What would you do?”

“Shout out.”

“Why?”

“Let whoever it is know I’m awake.”

“Good. It’s your house. If this is an intruder situation, you don’t need to be quiet. Unless you know it’s a professional assassin armed and ready to shoot, which I’m assuming is unlikely. Though, frankly, so is the likelihood of being attacked by a stranger. It’s more often someone you know.”

Their eyes glazed; it was enough, for now, to have introduced the topic. “If you think there’s someone in the house who might mean you harm, get off the bed. Mattresses are bad places to get pinned down. Get up and shout that you know they’re there, that you’ve called the police, and that you want them to leave. Shout out to them where all the doors are. Tell them you won’t come between them and an exit—that you just want them to leave. You always want an intruder or potential attacker to leave rather than have to fight you to escape. The point is to survive, not to win. When you’ve shouted, you should call the police. Call nine-one-one. Stay calm. Stay on the line. If anyone comes for you, don’t hesitate to use whatever force you need to stop them from abusing you. It’s your house.”

“So you should always know where the phone is.”

“Yes. You should have nine-one-one and a neighbor’s number on speed dial. You might even consider calling nine-one-one on your land line and your neighbor on your cell.” Because in Atlanta 911 was variable. Sometimes you got put on hold. Sometimes the dispatcher got things wrong. Sometimes they didn’t think women in danger were a priority. “You should also know where the cutoff valve for your water mains is, and for the gas; you should know where your circuit box is, where your spare keys are, where your fully stocked first-aid kit is. If you need to know, it’s likely you’ll need to know in a hurry. Find out now. Be prepared. It doesn’t do any harm.”

I paused.

“In our very first class I asked you to consider what you might be willing to do in various circumstances. I think you now have a better idea of what that means. However, we haven’t discussed what happens afterwards. What happens if you do defend yourself and you do hurt someone.”

Sandra was looking at her fingernails as though she’d never seen them before, but if she’d been a cat, her ears would have been pointing at me.

“The law might seem designed to protect those in need of protection, but occasionally defendants find it works more to protect the status quo. Officers of the court don’t much care for women who hurt people if for one minute a case can be made that you didn’t have to. So always be prepared to make a case. You’re allowed to use reasonable force if someone attacks or threatens to attack you. There’s usually a little more leeway if someone intrudes into your home. You have to show that the threat of attack is credible. Many judges and juries will not be kindly disposed towards anyone who seriously hurts a male, white middle-class citizen and can’t show bruises, or have no witnesses to testify to a knife or gun. I will deny saying this if anyone ever tries to quote me, but I’ve been a police officer and, frankly, there have been times when I wished the defendant had been willing to help the laws of evidence along a little.”

Jennifer frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She means make shit up,” Pauletta said, and looked at me.

“If you have to. Nine times out of ten, if you follow the guidelines I’ve given you, you won’t have to. Just document what actually happened. But be prepared. Who is your best friend? Would she or he be willing to back you up in court? Do you have your friend’s phone number on speed dial?”

“I couldn’t lie to a police officer,” Jennifer said, shocked.

Pauletta said something under her breath.

“What?”

“I said, you’ll probably never have to. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

“What do you mean?”

Tonya looked at the carpet, Pauletta glanced at Kim, who flicked her nails and shrugged, and Suze snorted. Nina smiled kindly. “Honey, I think what she probably means is that you’re the kind of person the police will always treat nice. A lot of us are. Nice clothes, wedding ring, good job, white skin.”

“I don’t see—”

I had a sudden appalling vision of Jennifer’s face, or Tonya’s, or Katherine’s, streaked with dirt and tears, and the flash of police lights, and her saying,
No, no, Officer, he didn’t have a gun; no, he didn’t have a knife; yes, I did date him, but only once, about a year ago. What’s that got to do with anything?
And the looks of contempt from everyone around her as she was led away; the officer’s big hand on her head as she was bundled into the car; staring bewildered at the plastic restraints on her wrists.
But he said he would hurt me. And I only hit him in the throat the way she taught us.

“Some of you are less likely to have trouble than others, yes, but the law tends to come down very heavily on women who hurt men. If you can afford it, keep the number of your lawyer on your cell phone.” Sandra put her feet together and scrunched her toes into the carpet, and suddenly I knew what they reminded me of: Luz’s feet. Young, untrammeled. The feet of a child who needed someone to protect her.

“What if we don’t have a lawyer?” Christie said. “What do we do?”

“Call me,” I said. It just came out.

THE NOISE OF THE CHAINSAWS RIPPING THROUGH THE BRANCHES ON THE CHERRY
tree made my head ache. Wherever Kick was, her headache would be worse. The tree surgeon, Guttersen, and his son, Ben, lopped off the first few smaller branches of the limb overhanging Kick’s dining room extension. They fell onto the concrete with a dry rustle. And then the rustling turned to thumps as the small branches gave way to medium-sized ones.

“Yo!” Guttersen let his saw stutter into silence and Ben followed suit, and Guttersen waved at the man in the truck standing by the huge winch. With an industrial beeping, the arm and canvas sling swung ponderously over the garage to the tree. Guttersen and Ben strapped and wrapped the right-hand limb. Guttersen checked his work, nodded me and Ben back, then yanked his saw to life. The teeth tore through most of the foot and a half in two minutes. He signaled the winch operator. The engine note changed up a gear and the cable tightened. Guttersen cut through the last few inches. With a creak, the sling sagged slightly, and then the limb rose majestically and was swung over the garage and into the bed of the truck.

Guttersen put his hands on his hips and grinned. He looked at me. “Sweet work.”

I nodded.

“Just in time, though, eh?” He pointed with his saw. Where the limb had been sheared away, the wood was dark inside, rotten to the core. “Could have come down anytime. Bye, bye, garage, maybe even the side of the house. The whole tree needs to come down. Could fall on the neighbor’s house. On the neighbor. Big liability.”

I pondered. “How long would it take?”

“Another thirty, forty minutes.”

I didn’t know where Kick was. My head hurt. I looked at the lopsided tree. Rotten to the core. Dangerous. Big liability.

“Go ahead.” As soon as I said it, my stomach rolled. I would have said it was a hangover, but last night I hadn’t had even two beers.

Guttersen started on the left-hand limb. Ben took his chainsaw into the bed of the truck and carved the severed right-hand limb as though it were a roll of butter.

I wandered down to the bottom of the garden. On the other side of the fence, the fluffy cat hunched under a raspberry bush, ears flat. “No rats,” I told her.

I sat on the grass. It was dry and prickly. Up close, I could see how much moss there was in the turf; although summer had barely begun, it was already greener than the grass. I had always thought Seattle was like Ireland, eternally soft and damp and green.

The sky was mostly blue, with a few aggressively cheerful little white clouds. A breeze came from the south, gentle, but strong enough to keep the smell of furious engines downwind. I turned my face to the sun and closed my eyes, and breathed in the scents of sun-dried earth and burgeoning berries.

The chainsaws stopped. I opened my eyes.

“Ma’am?” Guttersen said. I stood, but he wasn’t talking to me.

“I said, what the fuck are you doing to my tree?”

Kick was wearing a plain white T-shirt that fit at the shoulders but was tight around the breasts. A man’s. Dornan’s. Last night’s cut-off T was probably in the grocery bag she clutched in her left hand. Twined among the diesel smell was that of old smoke and stale beer.

She saw me as I crossed the lawn.

“Is this your doing?” She was very pale.

“Ma’am?” Guttersen said again.

“Well?” Kick said.

“It’s rotten,” I said.

She was even paler around the eyes. “You can’t do this.”

“It’s rotten,” I said again, but my stomach rolled again. “It’s dangerous. Tell her,” I said to Guttersen.

“This isn’t your tree?” he said to me.

“You’re fucking dangerous,” Kick said. “How dare you do this to my tree? Look at it.”

We all looked at it. There was nothing left but six feet of trunk.

The truck rumbled to silence. Ben jumped down from the back. “Dad?”

“Secure what’s in the truck,” Guttersen said. Ben turned to obey. Guttersen put down his chainsaw, took off his gloves and tucked them in his belt, and wiped both palms down his jeans. “Now,” he said to Kick, “it looks like there’s been some miscommunication here. Are you the owner?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like me to take the rest of this tree down?”

“No.”

“All right, then.” He pulled a card, bent at one corner, from his back pocket. “There’s my phone and e-mail. If you change your mind, let me know. If you don’t, well, I understand how you might be pissed, seeing as I didn’t check that this lady was the owner, and didn’t get any paperwork, and I apologize, I just . . .” He couldn’t find a way to end his sentence. “I apologize,” he said again, and held out his hand. Kick shook it. Such small hands.

“It’s not you I blame,” she said, and Guttersen was wise enough to simply pick up his saw and leave. Thirty seconds later, the truck ground its gears and eased out of the drive. She turned to me. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Not a thing. Not one word. I want you to leave. And if you send me flowers I will kill you. Do you even know what you’ve done?”

I paused, one hand on the gate, not sure if I was supposed to answer that or not. Not, I decided, and left her there, still holding her grocery bag.

TURTLEDOVE CALLED
me just as the Fairmont parking valet drove off with my car.

“Mackie’s real name is Jim Eddard. He has a string of juvenile arrests, everything from vandalism to petty dealing and minor assault. The last arresting officer thinks he was also involved in an arson eighteen months ago, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m on the set. He’s not here.”

“Do you have an address?”

“We have two possibles.”

“Is Finkel Junior there?”

“Who?”

“Bri. Mackie’s young friend.” I’d hung tags on both of them.

“One moment.” After a twenty-second pause he said, “He’s here.”

“Then stay there. Keep your eye on him. If Mackie comes in, watch him. If you have to choose, go with Mackie. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Less than twenty minutes. Meanwhile, start going through all the employee records.”

“Philippa started on that as soon as we saw Eddard’s sheet.”

“If you need to use staff for the record scrutiny, hire a couple of people.”

“We should be okay.”

“Good.” I shivered. It was cool in the shadow of the hotel. “For now, let’s not bother Finkel and Rusen or anyone else on set with this.”