“She cooks,” I said, and heard how lame an accusation it sounded.
“You think she’s poisoning our food?” He held up his hands palms outward like he was trying to keep a mountain lion at bay. “Honey, I’m not saying I know better than you, but wouldn’t there be an easier way? We both eat, we all eat what she cooks,” Carlo said. “Gemma-Kate and I appear to be fine. And it’s beginning to occur to me that you’re probably wise not to go to the police with your suspicions about her involvement at the church.”
I glanced at the broken plate on the kitchen counter and thought about breaking more, but that would have only solidified my status as a crazy woman in Carlo’s eyes. I reminded myself he hadn’t put in for this gig, having two shrieking harpies in his home. Actually, amend that, I was the only harpy shrieking. I backed off, wondering if maybe it wasn’t poison after all that was causing all my symptoms, the anxiety and the stomach upset. Maybe that was Parkinson’s along with the cramped handwriting and odd walk. Hallucinations? Could it be that?
So instead of breaking plates I bent over at the waist with my arms wrapped over myself, trying to press the anxiety out of my gut. I could even hear the slur in my own voice when I said, “I admit I don’t know what’s wrong with me. All I know is that it feels like my bones are crawling around inside my body and it’s all I can do to keep them from jumping out of my own skin. I can’t sleep at night.”
Without a beat Carlo relented. He wrapped his arms around me wrapping my arms around myself as if he wanted to help hold me in. I felt soft and weak and hated myself for feeling it but couldn’t help accepting his comfort. When I had stopped trembling so much, he disengaged and held me at arm’s length to take a look at me. He repeated, “Honey, I’d do anything for you, pack Gemma-Kate back to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow and damn her father. But I always consider myself a reasonable man, so I think it through before I take any action that might hurt people or cause you regret. Anxiety doesn’t seem like any kind of poison. You didn’t call a specialist yet, did you?”
I was still feeling a little tense, and I got defensive when he said “specialist,” as if he meant “psychiatrist.” “Do you think I’m paranoid?”
“No, more of a neurologist,” Carlo said. “So far I don’t know what I think.” He let go of me, opened the back door, and stepped into the yard. He called out, “Gemma-Kate, put on some shoes with socks, not those sandals. We’re going out.”
“Where?” she called back.
“To look at some petroglyphs. You and I.”
“Where are petroglyphs?” I asked.
He pointed to the Catalinas. “Right about there. It’s probably a half-hour walk from here.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“To get her out of the way so you can get yourself together.” He kissed me gently but without sentiment on my bruised mouth. “Or am I one of your suspects now?”
Of course not. It occurred to me that there was still so much I didn’t know about Carlo. He knew the worst about me. Did I know the worst about him? I shook off that thought, the paranoia again.
Gemma-Kate came back into the house and went off to her room to get her shoes while Carlo explained. “Maybe she’ll talk to me. It’s the best thing I can think of and I’m going with it,” he said. “Then you’re next.”
While Carlo went off to get his own hiking boots on, Gemma-Kate came back and stood in front of me. I saw a different person from the one who like a child had skipped along the sidewalk when she first arrived. This was Gemma-Kate when she felt attacked, and when the charming little girl didn’t serve her purpose anymore. Now her voice was as flat as her eyes.
“Have you ever read Nietzsche? No, probably not.” As if she felt more in control, knowing something I did not, Gemma-Kate’s voice got stronger. “There’s something called the death drive. That’s what they call the nihilistic inclination to destroy. It’s that feeling when you’re holding a kitchen knife and for a second you wonder what it would feel like to stick it into someone. Do you know that feeling? Or when you’re standing on a high place and you get the urge to jump. These urges are not extraordinary, though some people have them more than others. They want to die. Or they want someone else to die. Maybe right now you wish I were dead.”
Still amazed that this person could have eluded me while living in my house, “What the hell are you talking about?” was all I could say.
“You think I don’t know what you’re thinking. I do. You’re thinking I’m one of those psychopathic kids like in the movies. I’m not. I’ve got an IQ of one hundred and forty-five and I’ve been listening to Dad and Grandpa talk about you since I was four. I’m no sicker than you are. You really think you and I are that different?”
In no hurry to press me for an answer, if indeed she wanted one, Gemma-Kate licked her finger and bent to pick up a small shard of pottery from the plate I broke. She tossed it into the trash and turned back to me. “I know, Aunt Brigid. Let’s talk about the number of people we’ve killed in cold blood. You go first.”
“Okay, you, let’s get going,” Carlo said to her, having come into the room without hearing what she had just said to me. “And Brigid, we’ve got to pull ourselves together here. We’re supposed to be the grown-ups.” He turned to go, then turned back. “You look quite pale. We won’t be gone long. Are you sure you’ll be all right here for a while?”
I nodded, still too stunned to speak, and that was a good thing because no matter what ever happened with Gemma-Kate I couldn’t tell Carlo what she just said because I feared it was a little too true.
They left. I watched the Pug position herself at the door in the hopes they had gone to fetch her mate. It was only then that I realized I was rooted to the same spot I had been standing in while Todd reamed me a new asshole. I felt a muscle at the surface of my abdomen spasm like a bad running stitch. I rubbed at the spot until the cramp eased. It took some will and deliberation, but I finally managed to take a step, and then another, until I ended up in our bedroom, sitting on the bed, opening the drawer of my nightstand where I kept something that could kill.
I got out my FBI special and the box I kept it in, a wooden hinged job with a foam insert carved out for the gun. When I first married Carlo I had hidden the weapon in back of some broken computer equipment in a cabinet attached to my desk. Once we got to know each other a bit better he understood why I felt better having it beside me at night, and was not adverse to its presence in my nightstand next to the lubrication gel.
The box of shells was in a Victoria’s Secret gift box that had contained perfume from a Christmas present. I pocketed the shells with hands that didn’t used to tremble so.
The gun itself was already loaded. I wondered for a moment whether that was wise with Gemma-Kate around, the image of using it to frighten her out of her controlled smugness was so vivid, but I wouldn’t decide just now.
I took Carlo’s Volvo.
The Pima Pistol Club is a convenient three miles south of our house, but a torturous three miles it is. Like a mini mountain road it snakes between carved-out chunks of hill, and rattles your teeth over a washboard surface more rutted than not. I wanted to speed but would have been thrown against the roof of the car, so I kept it below thirty miles an hour, still jouncing.
The owner, a lean cowboy who I only knew by the name of Roger and the sticker
ONE DAY AT A TIME
that was stuck onto his service counter, greeted me at the window when I gave him my membership card.
“Hey, Brigid. Your husband tune you up?” he said, with what some guys still thought was humor. Just because he’s sober doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole.
I wondered what the nameless woman at the shelter was doing today. Whether she’d gone home. “Had a run in with an air bag, air bag won,” I muttered, not having the inclination just now to deliver my “Battered Women Jokes Aren’t Really Funny” lecture.
“I bet you could have taken it in the second round,” Roger said.
I indulged in one small glare as I signed the check-in sheet, then walked down the concrete pavement to one of the narrow cages, wood and chicken wire, with a small wooden shelf where I put the gun, and beside it, the box of shells. The cold range light was flashing, so there was no shooting from the several other members, all male. In front of my station there was already a target set up, a metal plate hanging loosely from a frame, that someone had neglected to bring back when they were done. Far in the distance was a dirt embankment that surrounded the range on three sides in case you missed the target.
A buzzard circled over the range. I tracked it with my weapon but didn’t fire. It’s a felony to shoot a bird of prey. I was in enough trouble with killing the saguaro.
I hadn’t brought my earphones to muffle the fire for a reason. I wanted to blast the sound of Gemma-Kate’s voice out of my head.
The cold range light stopped flashing as I sighted the target. “Hot range,” the loudspeaker said. I clenched my jaw and loosened my grip that fought against the trembling. I fired at the target, and fired again and again. I was hitting it pretty good but didn’t really care. Mostly what I was going for was the feel of the angry power in my hands and the shout of the rounds as they exited the muzzle. The ping of the bullet as it hit the metal plate was an added satisfaction. I imagined the plate was Gemma-Kate.
You want death drive?
Blam.
I’ll give you fuckin’ death drive.
Blam.
I did no one harm thinking that way.
I kept reloading, and shooting, and used up all the shells in the box. When they were gone, along with my hearing, which I trusted was a temporary condition, I waited for the cold range light, pulled in the target for the next person, loaded my gun into its wooden case, and left, calmer than when I’d arrived.
Along with the calm, the shooting also provided a little clarity of mind that I had been lacking. I went over my options apart from killing Gemma-Kate. Shipping her back home wasn’t one of them; Todd was stubborn and would probably just ship her back. And what would I tell him, you spawned an evil child? Given the Quinn reluctance to accept constructive criticism I knew he wouldn’t take well to that.
I could put her in a motel until it was time to move into the dorm. That was it, I could put her in a motel close to a McDonald’s and give her a little money every day so she wouldn’t starve. It would be expensive, but worth it to bring the peace back into our home. Then I could bring the other Pug home without worrying. Wait a second, I’d left the Pug in the house. No, that was okay, Gemma-Kate was off hiking with Carlo, so the Pug was safe at home. Carlo. Putting Gemma-Kate in a motel. Carlo would back me on that, wouldn’t he? Would he?
Then, what would happen when she moved into the dorm?
My cell phone rang. Thinking it might be Carlo worried about me, wondering too late what kind of spin Gemma-Kate might put on things, I pulled over and rooted around in my tote. It was too late to catch it, but I noticed it was Mallory’s number. I decided to drive home first and call her from there, partly because I was still feeling kind of pissed that she’d told Carlo my secret when I told her not to. That made me think of Mallory, and her unhappy situation.
I kept trying to get her to come out to the firing range with me, thought it would be good for her, but she always said she hated guns. Hated guns. How do I get mixed up with people who are so not me?
When I got home I put the gun back into my nightstand without cleaning it immediately as I usually did, and though it was empty and there were no more shells in the house, I still covered the box with some provocative underwear.
I washed my hands. Rather than pick up messages I figured it would be faster if I just called Mallory back, so I went into my office to call her. I started to, but then I saw the prescription for the movement disorder specialist on the desk next to my computer. Funny, the things you never dream will take more courage that you ever needed in the past.
Trying to avoid thinking about it turned all the calmness I’d achieved at the gun range into full-on gerbil brain. I thought about everything that had happened since Gemma-Kate arrived, how she had single-handedly fucked up my contented life in Arizona.
Then I thought again that maybe that was the whole Quinn family, that all of us had more than our share of evil inside. There was that time when I watched a man slowly die and was happy except that it went too fast. Okay, he was bad, he was very bad, but in extremis shouldn’t the impending oblivion of even a bad man make you feel regret? Maybe I, too, lacked that gene or whatever it was that created empathy, that discouraged what Gemma-Kate had called the death drive. Maybe Gemma-Kate was only the culmination of generations of bad-seed evolution. Did it come through Mom’s or Dad’s side? Dad’s probably. You could sort of see it in him.
Then I thought about something Mom had said once, Mom whose whole philosophy of life was based on other people’s platitudes, a stitch in time saves nine, you work as fast as you eat. Better the devil known than the devil unknown. She knew things about our family.
Aside from Gemma-Kate, one unknown I had been trying to avoid was Parkinson’s disease. But this was something that was in my power to know. The words of the guy we called Black Ops Baxter, who had trained me to fight, flashed through my skull. It was in the early days when I was afraid of being hurt.
Don’t be a pussy, Quinn.
I googled Parkinson’s disease and chose Wikipedia because that was the easiest. I took a deep breath and started to read, feeling ice crawl up my legs as my hands trembled over the keyboard.
I read through symptoms, prognosis, treatment. Jerky hands, odd gait, cramped handwriting, sensation of freezing, and on through memory loss, anxiety, depression.
So instead of incontinence, as I sometimes joked, this was what was going to carry me off.
I’d almost gotten kind of soft about God, thinking he was going to leave me alone for a few years, maybe shitting on easier targets for a while. I thought going to church would placate him. No such luck, Quinn, you’re in the divine crosshairs now. Life with Carlo was just a way of showing you everything you’re going to miss.