Save the Enemy (19 page)

When I wake up, it’s light out, and we’re parked in front of a monster-sized mansion.

“This is my mother’s house,” Pete says. He seems tired but certain. “We’re going inside.”

“Okay,” I say, anxiously, because always.

We park in the driveway. Sleepily drift up the cobbled path to the gold-painted front door. It’s an ornate house. It’s surprisingly hot outside. We moved to Virginia in late August, and it was ninety degrees for thirty days in a row, halfway through September. I wonder when that starts. Maybe soon.

Pete rings the bell. I hear a dog barking. I smile. I’ll get to play with a dog here. And a person with a dog is likely to be someone I like.

The door opens. Standing in front of us is P.F. Greenawalt. The first P.F. Greenawalt. P.F. Greenawalt, Political Consultant. Then a husky comes dashing past him, pushing its way out the door. Not just any husky. It’s Roscoe.

Roscoe. All those weeks of looking. All those doors I knocked on. All that crying. And here’s my dog, my dog, sitting in front of me, licking his lips. I bend down and hug him, bury my face in his fur. He smells unusually clean.

“I missed you, baby dog,” I say to him. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

I look up. “How did he get here?” I ask, looking at Pete, then at P.F., then at Pete again. “Pete?” I look at Molly. Maybe she knows. She’s nodding her head, eyes half-closed, as if she’s listening to music. Oh, Molly.

A woman appears at the doorway. A tall, blonde woman, with what Mom used to call “Republican hair”—hair that’s an oddly unnatural and uniform shade of yellow, that’s got this little bit of wave to it in a couple of places. Precise hair. Women in Rhode Island do not have such hair unless they host evening news programs. It’s mostly DC hair, and most prevalent, Mom liked to say, during certain more unfortunate presidencies.

I stand up. Roscoe leans against my legs. My dog. Things might be okay. My dog is back.

“Are you going to introduce me to your friends, Peter?” the precisely-coiffed woman asks.

“Don’t do this, Mom,” Pete says. “No more. It’s over, Mom. No more games.”

“What’s over?” I ask.

The woman’s perfect, blankly interested look matches her perfectly still blonde hair.

“I’m Madeleine Severy,” she says. “Call me Mrs. Severy.” She holds out her hand. I take it, damply. I regret, like usual, my own disheveled appearance. I look poor, I think. Molly, too. Molly looked so cute in the Biggest Little. Now she, like me, looks out of place.

Maybe not poor, exactly. I guess my standard about what poor is has changed since I moved to Virginia. But certainly out of our league, with Molly’s bangs sprayed up like some shrubbery, as is often the way in Rhode Island, and a purple silk shirt tied up into a knot at the waist; me in my Gap army coat and shitty jeans and bangs that I’ve been meaning to get cut for quite a while, if only I hadn’t been so busy trying to save my stupid father and run away from murderous lobbyists, etc.

This is Pete’s mom, apparently?
Peter
’s mom? She looks very rich. “Here, come in.” She steps aside. P.F. also steps aside. Then she calls to my dog. “Come in, Adolfo.” Roscoe glances up at me, then trots into the house. I feel a stab in my heart. This isn’t right. This is very not right.

“His name is Roscoe,” I say. “Where did you find him?”

No one says anything.

“What’s going on, Pete?” I ask. “
Peter
. Why is my dog here? Why are
we
here? And my dog.”

“What is P.F. doing here?” Ben asks me. “That is P.F., isn’t it?” Ben is not always great at recognizing faces, but I think he’s on the money here. He’s surprisingly unmoved by seeing Roscoe. I thought he liked Roscoe. I thought he loved him. I feel hurt that Ben isn’t more excited to see our dog. Our family isn’t what I thought it was, at all.

“Pete?” I say. Then I call out, hit my hands to my knee. “Roscoe!” If I can hug Roscoe again, then I will feel better. I can handle whatever it is going on here. I see Roscoe sitting next to Mrs. Severy. He looks up at her. He’s waiting for her to tell him what to do. She doesn’t let him come over to me.

I start to walk inside. Mrs. Severy is the one in control.

“Don’t go in there,” Pete says.

“Why?” I ask. “I don’t understand what’s happening, Pete.”

“Come in,” says Mrs. Severy again. Her voice is melodious and authoritative. I can see why Roscoe lets her tell him what to do.

“No,” says Pete. “Mom. Stop this. Stop it now. I came here to tell you that it’s over.”

“Come in, Peter Francis,” she says.

“Mom, I said no,” Pete says.

Ben turns to me. “They’re upset, right?”

“I think so,” I say back to him. I look up, try to make eye contact with someone, anyone, looking for a hint. Peter Francis. P.F. I feel my head getting more buzzy. My thoughts are going even more scattered. I’m tired. Maybe I’m dreaming. Is this all just a highly realistic nightmare? It’s got the elements of a dream. The confusion. The anxiety. The somewhat abstract and yet very authentic-feeling sense of danger involving snippets and images of things I know from the actual world, but combined into horrific new situations.

Maybe this is like what’s been happening inside Ben’s head when he goes to sleep at night and Mom details for him the times, dates, and places of Dad’s murders. Except that Mom’s not here and I don’t seem to be asleep.

Molly stops nodding her head. The music, or whatever the hell was going on in her brain, has apparently stopped. “Are we going in?” she says. “I really have to pee.”

She starts walking through the door.

Pete puts his hand on her arm. “No,” he says. He looks up at his mother again. “No!” he shouts at her. “No, Mom. No. I did everything you asked. But I came here today to tell you that it’s over. This is over. I’m not like you, Mom. I’m not. Let me go. Let them go.”

“Roscoe,” I say.

In my head, all
of a sudden and not super appropriately, I have this song that we used to sing at our yearly, highly secular Passover seders, that springtime celebration of the Jews escaping enslavement in Egypt: “When Galt was in Egypt’s land, let my Galt go.” Next verse: “Tell old Julia, let my Galt go.”

It was a take on that old anti-slavery song “Go Down Moses”:

Except Dad’s version gave him the opportunity to bring up the beloved dog Mom had dispatched to Scituate. It also gave him the opportunity to talk about property rights and how Mom had violated them when she dispatched Galt to Scituate. He also liked to get into one of his lectures about states’ rights and animal slavery, around this song.

Ben would top all this off with a flat statement about how most serious historians agree the Jews were never actually slaves in Egypt, and certainly did not, as the Passover story has it, wander in the desert for forty years after the escape was to have taken place.

“The boy is correct,” Dad would bellow. “I’m proud of you, son!”

The Seder participants are also supposed to sing a song called
“Dayenu.”
The song is about how “it would have been enough” and is supposed to thank the great magical man in the sky for helping the Jews above and beyond what was really necessary. It says, it would have been enough if the lord had simply killed off the Egyptian families’ firstborn sons. Then you say the word
“Dayenu.”
Then, it would have been enough if the Jews had simply been allowed to escape from slavery.
Dayenu
. It would have been enough if our enemies hadn’t been drowned in the Red Sea as the Jews were fleeing from Egypt.
Dayenu
.

This song, for some reason, would always get tipsy old Dad talking about the things that weren’t enough. It wasn’t enough that Mom gave away his dog. “No
Dayenu
!” he’d say. Not enough that he had to keep working as a corporate auditor, even though he really wanted to, like,
write
or do something more important than being a glorified bookkeeper. “No
Dayenu
!”

“And where’s my dog? My precious dog?” he’d say. Per the Passover meal’s requirements, Dad would have had three
glasses of wine by this part of the ceremony on top of the previous drinks. He’s really not a good drinker. “And why do we even do this ceremony? You don’t care about it, Julia. And it’s not based in any sort of actual factual history. Why do we do this?”

Then he’d launch into “Let My Galt Go,” at which point Mom would usually get up from the table and ask me and Ben if we’d like to go out for some ice cream cones. You’re not supposed to eat breaded things, like cones, during the whole Passover week.

Ben would go for ice cream. He’d always go for ice cream. I’d stay home with Dad, and we’d eat some of the tinned flourless macaroons that taste good if you’ve had three glasses of wine, I suppose, and not so good otherwise. Dad would usually abstain from bread for three days of the week, saying that he liked the discipline of it, and that it was good for losing a few pounds, before giving in and eating some pizza or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’d hold out as long as he did. It was one of our things that he’d do and I’d follow.

I’m not sure if now is the time to request divine intervention. Do we need any
Dayenu
moments here? Which ones? Locusts? The killing of the firstborn son? The parting of the … the what?

But even if the Passover story was made up, like Ben and Dad said it was, I was okay with that, too. That means that our people never had to suffer the actual hardships. We’re just inspired storytellers. I didn’t mind having that in my DNA, either. It’s a convenient escape. I could use one of those about now.

Mrs. Severy comes back
outside. Why does she have a different last name from Pete? Why does Pete have the same
name as these other men, the one who tried to kill me, the one who says he tried to save me. Who is now here with Pete’s mom. Who is Pete’s mom? Why are we here? WHY ARE WE HERE? Let’s
go
, I think. Please, let’s go. Let my Roscoe go, and let’s all go while we’re at it.

Pete’s mom, Mrs. Severy, looks quietly, elegantly furious. She says, “I should never have put you on this, Pete. You’re over your head. You’re just a musician. This should have been your sister’s job.”

“What job, Pete?” I ask.

“You work?” asks Ben. “But your family is rich. Look at this house. In this real estate market, this house must have cost … eighteen million. Maybe twenty.”

“Whoa. Really?” Molly asks. She turns to Pete. “Why did you drive such a shitty car?” She chuckles. “Meteoroid.”

Mrs. Severy smiles. “Kids, you must be thirsty after your long drive. Come in, have some water.”

“NO,” Pete says again. “Don’t go in.”

Molly says, “Dude, I have to
urinate
.” She draws out each syllable: your-eee-nate. Mrs. Severy, who cannot be used to hearing people draw out the syllables of the word urinate, doesn’t flinch.

Molly heads in, curtsying as she walks past a smiling Mrs. Severy. Molly, I realize all of a sudden, doesn’t spend a lot of time with people who live in castles. I look at Ben and Pete, then walk inside, too. My dog is in there. Ben follows. Pete comes in after Ben. My stomach feels exactly like it’s felt almost all the time since this whole business began. Tight. Pinched. Unpleasantly acidic. Full. I can’t breathe too well. Oh, now it’s a little different from how it’s been for most of this adventure. And I really could use the bathroom. It’s awful, but I think that I might have diarrhea. No, no, no no no nonononono. No. I can’t have
diarrhea now. Let my
bowels
go? No, please don’t let them go, at least not until …

“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask P.F.

I slink into the expansive marble foyer, which is flanked by two grand staircases, themselves flanked by golden handrails, up to a sweeping upstairs landing on which I can see a life-sized elephant statue, trunk erect. What the hell is this house?

“I’ll walk you,” he says. He and I head between the staircases toward what I can see is an absolutely gigantic tan-marbled kitchen. Molly follows.

“I’m going to piss in my pants,” she says.

“What are you doing here?” I ask P.F., when we’re away from the others (except Molly, who seems bizarrely uninterested, or maybe just doesn’t realize, that something is seriously amiss here). “What’s going on?”

“Do you trust me?” he asks.

“Are you out of your mind?” I’m bent over at the waist a little. “No. I don’t. What the hell are you doing here? What’s going on? You know Pete’s
mom?
”

“Here’s the bathroom,” P.F. says.

Molly goes in. “Whoa, this is really fancy,” she says, her voice echoey from behind the closed door.

“I met someone else named P.F. Greenawalt. Peter Francis Greenawalt. Met might not be the right word. He tried to kill me. I hit him in the side of the head with a shovel. A spade. Do you know him?” I ask. I hear the noise of Molly peeing, then the sound of the sink. My tummy’s making unfeminine sounds. Distressingly unfeminine sounds.

“You coming out, Moll?” I ask.

“Hang on,” she says. I hear some more noises. Shufflings, squeaks. I imagine she’s opening the medicine cabinet,
looking for something interesting. Wonder if she’ll find anything. What she’ll find.

“You okay?” I call in, after a few minutes.

“Fine,” she says, a funny tone in her voice. A tone that makes it sound like she’s straining to do something. Maybe she had to pee, then realized she had to poop? Or maybe …

“Drug problem,” I mouth to P.F., who nods. “But she’s paid the price. She’s on the road to wellness,” I whisper loudly, having no idea whatsoever what I’m talking about but feeling that words like these would be appropriate. Then I whisper: “So, who the hell are you anyway?”