Tully

Shakie shrugged and smiled. ‘You’re right. It was bullshit.’

‘Besides, his father died, how can you be so happy?’ said Tully.

‘Well, he’s gonna need a lot of cheering up, ain’t he?’ replied Shakie, gleaming. ‘And I mean a lot of cheering up!’ She giggled and jumped up in the air.

Tully laughed despite herself.

She saw him a few days later when he came to pick up Shakie. Shakie’s station was full, so Sylvia sat him down at one of Tully’s empty tables. Tully came up to him, real calm, real cool. ‘What can I get you?’ she asked. He looked the same as ever. Better. Sun-drenched, blond, and hard. But Tully’s eyes were all fogged up like wet glasses.

‘How are you?’ he asked Tully.

‘Oh, all right, getting along, couldn’t be better.’ She tried not to blink and not look at him, either, while her heart gripped and ripped her.

‘What can I get you?’ she repeated, her voice cold.

He reached out and touched her fingers, lightly. ‘I’m sorry, Tully,’ he said. ‘I am. So sorry.’

He said that at graduation, too. Sought her out – cornered her, almost – and said, ‘I’m sorry, Tully. I’m so sorry.’ Now, as then, his serious, intent face made her speechless.

‘Oooohhh, Jackie!’ squealed Shakie, throwing herself and her hair all over Jack, kissing him and giggling. Jack rubbed Shakie’s back. ‘All right, all right, what’s gotten into you?’ he said.

Tully left them and finished her tables, married some ketchups, and filled some saltshakers and sugar bowls. She kept her eyes on her unsteady hands.

‘Tully, do you need a ride?’ he asked her on his way out.

God! I wish he didn’t know my name, she thought.

‘You must be joking!’ said Shakie before Tully could answer. ‘She’s got the most brilliant car. A 1978 blue Camaro. She should be asking you if you need a ride.’ Jack stared at Tully so hard and so sad that she wanted to smash his face in. Smash his face in or break down right in front of him and his girl.

A week later, Shakie walked over to Tully’s trailer after work. She entered, sat down, and burst into tears.

Tully rolled her eyes. Walking over slowly, she sat carefully on the corner of the sofa. She wanted to put her arm around Shakie but just couldn’t do it.

‘What’s the matter. Shake? He leave?’

Shakie nodded, crying. ‘Going to.’

Tully rubbed her hands together. Clenched her fists, unclenched them.

‘I thought he’d be staying, I thought maybe he would stay,’ Shakie was muttering. ‘But no, he had to go, he said, had to go back. Didn’t want to be back here anymore, he said.’ She continued to cry, and Tully continued to sit there and say nothing. They sat for a long time, until it got too much for Tully, just too fucking much, and she said, ‘Shakie, I’m really sorry, because I like you and wish I could be a better friend to you now that you need someone, but I can’t make you feel better about this. Do you understand?’

Shakie wiped her eyes and looked at Tully.

‘Shakie,’ continued Tully, cracking her knuckles, ‘I will cover your ass for Sylvia, and I will clean your tables, and I will drive you home. I will help you with anything else, but I cannot help you with this. I just can’t, please understand. I just can’t help you.’

Shakie stared at her.

‘Powerless!’ exclaimed Tully. ‘Yes, powerless, and helpless. And I cannot stand to see you cry over this!’ she screamed suddenly and stood up. Tully’s face was a mask of pain and Shakie just sat on the bed, astonished. Tully pressed her clenched fists to her eyes and whispered, ‘I cannot stand to see you cry over him.’

It was a while before Tully took her hands away from her face. ‘Please be a friend to me, don’t do this in front of me, Shakie, okay? Otherwise I really won’t be able to be friends with you anymore. Okay?’

‘Okay, okay,’ Shakie said quickly, getting up and coming close to Tully. ‘Okay,’ she repeated, and went to hug Tully, who backed away.

It was dark but Tully wasn’t afraid. After Shakie left, Tully drove up to St Mark’s, parked the car, and walked around back. The gate screeched when she opened it, badly needing oiling. Making her way carefully through the backyard, Tully stopped near a wrought-iron chair, which had been brought out by Father Majette when he had found Tully lying on the ground. ‘God doesn’t distinguish between the dead and the living, my child,’ he had said. ‘He loves both equally. You’re still living, Natalie Anne. You wouldn’t want our Lord to mistake you for the dead, lying as you do among them.’

Only barely, thought Tully, moving the chair out of the way and lying down on the December Kansas ground. Only barely living, she thought, lying down in her coat and scarf and gloves next to a flat gravestone embedded in the earth. She ran her fingers carefully and gently over the cold stone.

4

One, two, three, four minutes of screaming. Raw, ugly, horrible screaming. Lynn Mandolini was shaking Jennifer, shaking Jennifer and screaming. Tully pressed her palms hard against her ears, wanting to break her eardrums, wanting just stop, stop.

She opened her eyes and saw Lynn pressing her lips to Jennifer’s face, pressing her mouth to Jennifer in an attempt to, Tully didn’t know what, but she shut her eyes quick, pressing the balls of her hands to her eyes to go blind to ward off Lynn Mandolini to stop to stop. But it was too late. The image of Lynn bending over and desperately pressing her lips to what was left of Jennifer burned like a big black tattoo into Tully’s head. Tully closed her eyes but continued to see a crazed mother bending over her only daughter.

Still on her knees, Tully moved towards the bathroom. ‘Mrs Mandolini, Mrs Mandolini,’ Tully whispered, her head bent. ‘It’s no use.’

But Lynn didn’t hear Tully, through her bloodcurdling screaming and whimpering, whimpering that made ants crawl on Tully’s skin.

‘Please, Mrs Mandolini,’ Tully repeated inaudibly, briefly looking into the bathroom.

There she is, lying in her mother’s arms. Lying in them. She lay in them when she was born and she is lying in them now. Well, it is only right that she should be lying in her mother’s arms, and not in mine.

Tully could not see Jennifer’s head, covered as it was by Lynn’s upper body, but she could see that Lynn’s face and hands, Jennifer’s white T-shirt, the floor, the shower curtain, the walls, the toilet all were dripping, saturated, soaking in what remained of Jennifer.

The doorbell rang; Tully went downstairs to answer it. She saw the policeman outside.

‘Is everything all right?’ he said, raising his cap. ‘A neighbor across the street – ’ he pointed to an elderly woman, standing still. ‘She seemed to think,’ he continued, ‘there was some trouble.’

‘There has been…some trouble,’ said Tully blankly, and then Lynn started to scream again. The policeman gently pushed Tully aside and ran up the stairs. Tully continued to stand near the open door. I could just go, go right now, just walk on out, right now, walk down the driveway, down the path, away from Sunset Court, away forever from Sunset Court.

‘Miss, miss.’ The police officer ran back down the stairs. He didn’t look the same anymore, thought Tully. ‘We need to call an ambulance,’ he said, and Tully noticed he was shivering. She noticed that she herself became calmer and calmer the more tumultuous the reaction around her got. The more she heard Lynn Mandolini’s screaming, the more something was swinging shut inside her. The more steady her hands became, the more regular her breath, the less she prayed, and the less she closed her eyes. And now the near-panic of this man for an ambulance made her almost, almost amused.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘it’s a little late.’

The ambulance came anyway, in about ten minutes. Two ambulances. And another police car. The lights, the blue and white colors, flashed so insistently, they nearly drowned out the image of Jennifer’s red blood. The sirens coming up the street nearly drowned out the sound of Lynn’s terrible screaming. After the paramedics rang the bell, they stood politely near the door, waiting for Tully to let them in, just like insurance salesmen or plumbers. ‘Have you thought about insurance?’ ‘We’ve come to replace your pipes.’

Swinging the door open, she pointed them upstairs, where the police officer was prying Lynn off Jennifer. Before he went up there for the second time, he went into the downstairs john and quietly threw up. Tully heard that sound. Compared to the screaming, it was an unchained melody to her. The paramedics had to give Lynn five hundred milligrams of Thorazine before they were able to detach her from Jennifer.

‘Miss, what’s your name, miss?’ said another policeman, touching Tully on the arm. She flinched from his touch.

‘Makker,’ she said, her mouth numb, like it was full of Novocain. Novocain that had been administered only after the dentist had drilled raw into her nerve endings.

‘Would you like something to calm yourself?’ the police officer inquired, and Tully looked down at her body, completely still, completely immobile.

‘If I was any calmer,’ she said, ‘I’d be in a coma. No, thank you.’ One of the paramedics grabbed her wrist and felt her head, uttering, ‘Shock. Needs to go to the hospital. Needs to be treated. Put her in with the mother.’

Tully snatched her wrist back from him. ‘I am fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just fine.’

‘Shock,’ the paramedic repeated in the same flat tone he might use for ‘Left. Right. One, two, three.’ ‘Needs to be treated.’