her in the shaft of afternoon sun. Freddie’s behind her, holding twin apron strings and giggling.
I love Freddie this way.
“Malcolm wants to go home,” I tell Mom, and Freddie’s giggles stop, like someone has just thrown a switch.
“Before lunch? I’ve just sliced up half a salami.” If there’s a true evil in the world according to the Gospel of Sandra Fischer, it’s an overabundance of already-sliced cold cuts. My mother, a child of a child of a long-ago depression, hates waste. “Stay. Have lunch. You can go home after.”
Freddie is down on the carpet, an old frayed and sun-faded remnant from my mother’s first home, before Malcolm has the chance to open his mouth. She’s started her rocking routine, shutting out the world around her, keeping all hurt at bay.
“Christ,” Malcolm says. “Again?”
And then, loud and clear and horrible, he says the worst thing I can imagine.
“This is why she needs to go, Elena. She’s not right in the head.”
Every limb in my body seems to respond at the same time. My feet carry me down five steps in what feels like a single movement. My left arm arcs backward, part of me and not part of me at once. My mouth opens and forms the syllables of “bastard” as a fist I didn’t know I was capable of strikes Malcolm squarely in the jaw, slanting off, hurting.
Malcolm says nothing, only pushes a bundle of coats and shoes into my chest. They’re heavy, but not as heavy as my rage.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” I whisper.
And I know now that, one way or another, we’re over.
It takes me thirty minutes to get Freddie’s coat and shoes on.
Malcolm waits in the vestibule, tapping his Bruno Magli–clad foot and scowling. My parents and Anne stand quietly in a corner of the living room, deliberately not making anxiety-inducing eye contact with Freddie, although Dad turns toward the front door every few seconds to toss an icy glance at Malcolm.
“It’s all right, baby,” I say in my soft voice, a voice that struggles to emerge as my ugly voice, the one I want to use toward my husband, boils up and battles for control. “Ice cream at home. And then we’ll watch the movie about the princess, okay?”
Ice cream and princesses are the last fucking things on my mind. Brass knuckles and Amazon warriors, though, yeah.
Finally, Freddie’s settled.
“Go on and kiss your Oma and Opa now.” I want to bring her upstairs to kiss her great-grandmother goodbye, but Malcolm has already opened the front door, letting a chilly breeze in. As if it weren’t cold enough in the house.
Now it’s my turn to make the rounds. They’re less permanent, as I know I’ll be seeing my parents and grandmother before long, probably next weekend. Probably sooner than that, since the thought of spending one more second than necessary with Malcolm tastes like yellow bile.
It’s cute how wrong I am, and how I don’t even know it. Not yet.
I shrug my coat on and trade soft slippers for my hard leather shoes, imagining them as combat boots I’ll need for the ride home. Malcolm leads our unhappy little parade out to the car: him, then Freddie and Anne, then me.
And then a blur of terry cloth and gray hair emerges from the doorway. My grandmother.
She’s almost running toward me on two legs and a cane, reaching out to the coat on my back with her other hand, clawing.
“Don’t let her go, Leni. Whatever you have to do, don’t let her go to that . . . place.” Another word lingered on her lips. Nearly another week will pass before I understand the full weight and meaning of the word she stifled.
“What am I supposed to do about it?” I say. “It’s the law.”
Oma yells to Malcolm to wait with a force that surprises everyone. She pulls me close and asks me one question: “Do you want Freddie in a prison?”