An Untamed State (38 page)

“Miri,” Michael said. “Are you there?”

“You have been somewhat of an asshole. I need you to know that and I need you to be nicer to me.” I hung up on him again and it felt good. I waited a few moments and called Michael back. Neither of us said anything for a long while. We breathed.

Finally, I said, “I’ve always been the fighter and that has worked for us but I don’t . . . I can’t do it right now. You need to be the fighter. You need to fight for me and for us, or you need to walk away.”

“You make it sound like this could be an easy decision.”

“It is mostly easy, Michael. Either you can fight for me until I . . . until I can find my way back or you can’t. And if you can’t that’s fine. Or it’s not fine but it is out of my hands. I’ll let you go. You’ll let me go. Eventually, we’ll work out what’s best for Christophe.”

Michael flared his nostrils. “Here you go again, making decisions for us without letting me into the process, not even a little bit.”

“That’s not what this is. I can’t fix me and us at the same time.”

He grunted. “I guess you’ve given me a lot to think about.”

I swallowed my irritation. At least I had that. “I guess I have. Goodbye, Michael.”

This time, when I hung up, I didn’t call him back. There was a quiet finality to our conversation, one I could live with. He didn’t call me back, either. The birds disappeared past the horizon. They left me. Nothing would take me away.

E
verything was out of control. Michael knew that.

The morning after they found Mireille in the outbuilding, his mother had a long talk with Michael while Mireille slept.

“Everything comes easy to you, Michael,” Lorraine said. “It always has. That’s not your fault but now, something isn’t coming easy to you and you are acting like a damn fool. There’s nothing easy about what you’re dealing with but you need to face that and step up.”

Michael didn’t know what to say to his mother so he shrugged, his eyes burning at the edges. He couldn’t bring himself to look Lorraine in the eye. “I don’t think anyone could step up to something like this. My wife was kidnapped but I went through something too.”

Lorraine gave him a look he had never seen from her. Michael wasn’t sure if it was disgust or disappointment or a little of both. “You are breaking her heart. It’s written all over her face.”

“I’m the last thing on Miri’s mind right now, Mom. She barely even talks to me.”

“She talks to me. She doesn’t say much but most of what she has to say is about you and the baby and how much she wishes she could be with you both.”

“Right. The baby she ran away from,” Michael said. “She left us, without a word, right when I got her back.” He yanked at his hair. “I keep losing her.”

Lorraine’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t even know you right now.”

“I don’t know myself, either,” he said, storming out of the house, his face burning. For hours, he walked along the dusty paths between the house and the barn and a cluster of outbuildings. He called Mona to check on Christophe and avoided answering her questions about Mireille. Later, his father interrogated Michael while they were in the barn, fixing one of the milking machines.

“This is not how you were raised,” Glen said, “and I think that’s all I really need to say about the way you’re acting.”

Michael kicked at a rotting board. “You and Mom think you know so much. You have no idea what I’ve been through. Every second she was gone I was dying. Every single second. Honestly, I still feel that way.”

Glen removed his hat and began squeezing the bill. He grunted. “You take a look at those bruises around your wife’s neck and every damn where else?”

“I’m not blind, Dad. I’m supposed to just suck it up because I don’t have any bruises?”

“You are not behaving like the man I know you are, Michael Scott.”

Michael paled. “I’m not making myself clear. I just . . . I need help, too. I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t understand half of what she’s saying. I look at her and just want to cry because she’s hurting so bad and I can’t fix it.”

Glen pulled his hat back down on his head, sank to his haunches, and resumed his tinkering. “You’re still thinking this is about you, Michael. Don’t get me wrong. You’ve been through hell. I’d lose my mind if your mother were hurt like that. But you should have seen your wife when your ma was sick, the things she did to help us even though your ma was ornery as hell. It makes me sick to say this but thank God we didn’t have to depend on you. Everything would have fallen apart.”

Michael chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Don’t say that. I’m trying my best. I don’t know how to get us past this.”

Glen stood again, wiping his hands on his overalls. “What makes you think you need all the answers right now?”

Michael smiled wearily. “I’m an engineer, Dad.”

His father chuckled, but quickly grew serious. “I remember when you were in eleventh grade, doing real good in wrestling. That year, we drove down to Lincoln for the state championship. Your ma and I were so proud because you were unbeatable, pinning guys fast and doing all sorts of crazy things on the mat. We had no idea where you got all that from. You got a look at your first opponent and all of a sudden, you didn’t feel well, started holding your stomach and mumbling some horseshit about the flu. It was the first time you had come up against a guy bigger than you. Your coach told you to walk it off and you did fine but I still remember how you wanted to walk away, as great as you were. I had hoped you finally learned how to stand up to something bigger than you.”

Michael lowered his head before clapping Glen’s shoulder. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Glen looked Michael up and down and shook his head. “I don’t think you are. I don’t think you’re even close.”

There was nothing Michael could say or do to explain himself. When he closed his eyes, he heard his wife screaming. When he opened them, she was gone, always gone. He was on his own. On his way back to the house, Michael kicked the barn door over and over until he couldn’t lift his leg anymore. Back at the farmhouse, he wrote Mireille a note. He left.

Now, he was alone in Miami, with Christophe. Michael’s eyes were dry and his neck and knees ached. He slept badly on the two flights back to Miami, a middle seat for both legs, nowhere to fall but forward. Walking through the airport to the parking garage made him sick to his stomach. The Miami airport was a horrible place, he decided, always sending people to or returning them from sorrow.

There was the right thing to do. Michael knew that. He was supposed to stand by his wife, this woman he barely recognized, the one who was normally poised and confident, maybe even a little arrogant but always captivating. She was his compass point.

But this woman was a stranger. He hated himself for thinking it but it was the truth. His wife was a stranger. Or he was the stranger. He had failed her from the moment she was taken until the night she was returned. He couldn’t stop replaying that afternoon, wondering how he could have stopped those men, wondering how he didn’t.

That night she was returned, after finding Miri outside by the fire, he got a phone call from Victor, who told Michael to meet him on the street outside Sebastien’s gates. Victor was alone in his car, the radio humming.

“What’s up?” Michael asked as Victor put the car into gear and pulled away.

“We’re going to handle some business.”

Michael’s stomach flopped and he cracked his knuckles, leaned forward in his seat. “You know who did it, don’t you?”

They pulled up to the same squat house they had visited days earlier. It was late, soon morning would rise, and the street was empty, no lights on in the house.

“There’s a crew that suddenly has all kinds of money. This motherfucker we talked to lied and now we’re going to fix him good.”

Michael looked around. A stray dog ambled past, growling softly. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Michael said. “We should report this to the police or something.”

Victor got out of the car and slapped his hand against the roof of the car. “You don’t think that the men who did this wouldn’t own the police too? Now shut up and get out.”

Reluctantly, Michael stretched himself out of the car and stood, swinging his arms in front of his chest the way he used to before wrestling matches.

“Follow me,” Victor said as he strode right up to the door and began pounding. There was silence, then a light and the door unlocking. TiPierre opened the door and peered out, his eyes half-lidded.

“Victor, what the fuck?”

Victor pulled his gun out from his waistband and shoved his way into the house. Michael followed, adrenaline burning through his skin. Victor cocked TiPierre’s forehead with his gun and the young man grabbed his face as it began bleeding. “You shouldn’t have lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie, and Laurent is going to fuck you up for this,” he whined. “Why do people keep messing with my face?”

In the dim light, Michael and Victor noticed the bandage on TiPierre’s cheek. Victor tapped the bandage with the barrel of his gun. “What happened there?”

“Cat got me. Fucking pussy.”

Victor ripped the bandage from TiPierre’s face, studying the wound, still fresh and open and angry and red. “That doesn’t look a cat scratch, not at all. It looks like someone took a bite out of you.”

TiPierre shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Victor cocked him with the gun again and kneed TiPierre in the stomach. He hunched over, wincing. “You better stop or we’re going to have a real problem.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Michael asked. “Who is this guy?” Everything was moving too fast.

TiPierre finally looked at Michael. He sucked his teeth. “Who is this
blan
?”

Things were slowly starting to make sense. Michael’s knees nearly buckled. All the nervous energy he had been bottling inside threatened to explode out of him. “You know who took my wife,” he said. “You know.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you better get out of here before you find real trouble. Victor, get this
blan
out of here.”

Victor handed Michael his gun. “He works for the man who took your wife. He was in on it. Handle this.”

Michael looked down at the gun, marveled, not for the first time, at how easily it fit in the palm of his hand, how easy such a destructive thing was to hold. His finger curled around the trigger and Michael exhaled. He lifted his arm up, tried to hold steady as he pointed the gun at another man. That too was easier than he imagined. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the first deer he killed with his father, that youthful sorrow over the loss of a once-living thing. And here was this man, nearly at his mercy. And suddenly, he understood, that this man had hurt his wife. He could see it in the eyes. He could smell it on the man. Michael was incandescent with anger. His arm began to tremble and he felt the veins in his neck bulging.

“Okay, okay,” TiPierre said, backing away. “Laurent took the bitch, but it was just business, Victor. Don’t act like you don’t do business. Walk away, man, and no one will know you were here.”

His body moved before he could stop himself. All the air rushed from Michael’s chest as he threw himself at TiPierre, fists flying, shouting with such force, spittle punctuating every word. The men fell to the concrete floor. TiPierre put up a good fight, at first, but Michael’s muscle memory was stronger. Soon he had the younger man pinned on his back. Michael brought his fists to TiPierre’s face over and over until his knuckles were raw and TiPierre’s face was a pulpy mess. The man on the ground gurgled, and Michael stopped, heaving as he held the man’s shirt in his fists.

“Here,” Victor said, handing Michael the gun once more.

Michael took the Glock. He was strangely calm as he released the safety and pressed the barrel beneath TiPierre’s chin and still, he wanted to cry. He wanted to be home with his wife. He wanted this to have never happened. He wanted there to be some kind of justice in the world. Michael looked into the other man’s eyes, nearly swollen shut. He dared to imagine what this man had done to his wife, the mother of his child, who couldn’t hide what she had been through. He dared to imagine how this man’s face had been wounded. Michael’s finger trembled against the trigger. He could do this one thing for Mireille. He could offer her this small justice. A child started crying and when Michael looked up, he saw a woman, holding a crying boy on her hip, maybe a year old. Her eyes were wide with fear as she looked from Michael to TiPierre on the ground.