Robin Koman
Zyczenie
People say that the blood thins after time in the South, but Viviane was born in Florida and feels her blood pull like thick sap in response to the taste of winter. Even though the snapping turtles are hiding now in the cozy muck, even though the cypresses on the edge of the lake by her house have dropped their rusty needles, Viviane knows that the heat will be back soon.
And so, she is driving. The sun is gone, hidden by office buildings and trees. The streetlights are flickering to life one by one. The normal mildew stink of her car is washed away by the sweet, chill wind pouring through the open window. Her coarse white hair is tied back in a braid so that it does not obscure her vision. Her ears are tickled and numb. She is driving, her windows down, classical music on the radio.
The front has pushed back the clouds. More stars are visible than she has seen in years, glittering between the sharp fingers of the palm trees and the shaggy moss of tired scrub oaks, cutting through the dull purple glow from downtown Orlando. Viviane finds herself struggling to keep her eyes on the traffic lights instead of the sky. The DJ plays The Moonlight Sonata, and pain lances through her right hand. She keeps her left on the wheel and slides the right between her legs. The moist heat begins to relieve the tension on rheumatoid-swollen knuckles.
The first time her doctor suggested this remedy, her cheeks burned. The first time the pain in her hand was bad enough to make her weep, her need for relief quietly conquered embarrassment.
Viviane turns onto a side street, and the periodic pools of amber from the streetlights grow farther and farther apart. Tiny cinderblock houses huddle together like rabbits in warrens, each lawn covered with cars, and in the cold, in the dark, there is something beautiful about their claustrophobic closeness. Viviane holds back tears as the sonata ends, and the DJ introduces a new piece—Respighi’s Adagio with Variations. The song is rich, rolling, and somber, a perfect contrast to the crisp solitude of the sonata. When the tiny dog—she thinks, is it a Jack Russell, a beagle, a mutt?—darts out into the street, she swerves hard to the left and into the path of the child chasing it.
The noise the child’s body makes on the hood of the car is audible over the squeal of her brakes and the tremolo of the woodwinds. It is identical to the sound the sacks of flour made as they were dropped to the floor in her grandfather’s bakery when she was a girl. The hood of the car will not even be dented. She is certain of it.
The Adagio is still playing as she slides the car into park. The grip of the gear shift is worn smooth with years and slick with sweat. Dust coats the dash in a light layer of gray. The metallic smell of damp is back, now that the car isn’t moving. She never fixed the cracked rubber molding around the doors. It leaks with every rain. When Viviane opens the door, it gives a low, dry squeal. The dog barks somewhere in the night.
Even in the cold, Viviane sweats as she walks around to the front of her car. The white paint is gray with pollen and the summer’s dirt. A small smear of dark on the hood trails up to the bottom of the windshield. No one has come outside. No one cares that the dog is barking, that a car is stopped in the middle of the street. The child is alive, lying on the border of the headlights and the night. A foot tap, tap, taps irregularly against the pavement, over the mutter of the engine and the strains of music piping through the speakers.
Viviane winces against the pain in her joints as she goes to her knees. She loses her balance and stops herself with her right hand. Warm liquid pools under her fingers. Sticky. It is red in the glow of the headlights. The rancid scent of radiator fluid colors everything. Never got that crack fixed, and the black pepper trick that her father swore by isn’t working. Viviane looks up. The stars are still there, framed by trees that line the road. The dog is behind her now, warm breath and snuffling against her shoes, calves, and backside.
Viviane feels a flutter on her skin. She looks down. A tiny, sun-brown hand is gently brushing the swollen knuckle of her index finger.
“Oh, oh dear God.” Viviane’s voice is a moan.
The boy’s sneakers are red with white laces. One of them is coming off, and his socks are gray. He’s wearing denim shorts, and both his knees have been skinned on the asphalt. His left leg is twisted, his foot jerks spasmodically as he tries and fails to straighten it. A cartoon character is printed across the chest of his white t-shirt. His right arm is bent underneath his body; something is wrong with the angle of his shoulder. Viviane looks into large, almond eyes brimming with tears. The pink stains from the burst capillaries in the whites of his eyes make the green flecks in his irises dance. She cannot tell if his hair is dark or bloody. Viviane fights the gorge rising in her throat. She will not be sick. He can’t be more than six years old.
For the first time, she finds herself glad that she has grown old, solitary, and childless. She had quiet summers at the shore, not shrieking giggles stepping from the warm white sand to the chilled, ocean-pressed tide line. There were trips to New York, to Europe, instead of trips to the pier or to feed the dolphins at Sea World. No homemade cupcakes for the myriad celebrations that life seemed to offer. Let her sister have these things, these memories of childhood. It’s good she hasn’t had them. It is good because she never had to face this, this robbery in the dark.
His hand closes on her fingers, squeezes. His breath comes in a piccolo pant.
“Momma, Momma, Momma.”
And then it stops.
Viviane’s hands are so slick that she almost drops her cell phone as she slides it out of her pocket. Her knuckles creak and pop as the numbers blink – 9-1-1. His thin chest under the white t-shirt moves in irregular rhythm, making the cartoon character look like it’s dancing.
“9-1-1. What is the nature of the emergency?” The man’s voice is stiff, clinical. How many times has he received this call?
“A boy, he ran out into the street. I hit him with my car.”
“Where are you located?”
Hell. Hell on a moonlit street. “Can’t you trace that?”
“That takes time, ma’am. Do you know the location?”
The street signs are lost in the distance. The boy is breathing again, whistling breaths with a thick gurgle running underneath. “I turned off of University, a few lights after Forsyth. I was just out for a drive. Please…” A vise grips her chest in a burst of heat.
“Is the child breathing?”
“Yes, but there’s blood.”
“Have you moved him?” His voice is sharp.
“No.”
“Good. That’s very good. Can you see a wound?” The operator’s voice shifts into a gentle cadence, almost sing-song. Operator training to soothe the horror-struck.
“No.” Where are the ambulances, the police?
“Ma’am, help is on the way. Do you know CPR?”
“I did. It’s been a long time. But I checked him. He’s still breathing.”
“It’s all right, ma’am. Take a deep breath. It will be a few minutes before the ambulance arrives. If anything happens, I can help you help him.”
The boy’s hand is so still, so cold on her skin. His foot makes tiny twitches like a dog chasing rabbits in its sleep.
“Ma’am, are you still there?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracks.
“Don’t hang up.”
The operator continues to ask Viviane about the boy, and she stares at the faded face of her watch, the cracked leather band, anything to avoid focusing on the child. In the dim flow from the streetlights, the second hand moves around the face; time seems to jump--one minute, three minutes, five. Sirens sing high on the air. An ambulance and two police cars race around the corner in bursts of red and white, white and blue. Porch lights snap on, up and down the street. A woman’s voice echoes, trembling and faint, from somewhere in the night. She is calling for her son, calling Nicholas, Nicholas.
The boy is quiet on the ground, blood pooling under his head, and then gentle, anonymous hands, murmuring voices, are helping Viviane to her feet, leading her to a squad car. Someone takes her cell phone, speaks briefly, hands it back. She trips once, twice; the ambulance people and some policemen lift the boy onto a stretcher. A woman, slight with long chestnut hair and the boy’s ruddy skin, darts into the light, looks at the child, and her scream ruptures the silence of the night sky.
A police officer takes the woman’s arm, and at the same moment, Viviane feels a hand grip her wrist. The policewoman holding her is Black, heavy-set, with braids gathered up in a small ponytail at the back of her neck. The officer tips back her hat, smiles.
“Please, sit down here. I have to ask you a few questions.”
Her car is shining black and tan. The back door is open, waiting. The off-gray upholstery has an odd smell that Viviane can’t place, but her knees stop throbbing once she settles onto the seat. The officer lowers herself to one knee.
“My name is Officer Hobbes. What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Viviane. Pearce. It’s Viviane Pearce.”
“Do you have your license in your purse, Mrs. Pearce?”
“Miss Pearce.” The zipper on her bag sticks, but after a moment of struggle, she pulls the wallet through the tiny gap. Her hands shake as she hands it to the officer.
“Miss Pearce.” Officer Hobbes balances the wallet on one knee as she writes in a notepad. “May I ask why you were in the neighborhood tonight?”
“The weather.”
The officer’s brow furrows. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s such,” Viviane pauses as the ambulance moves back down the street. A crowd of people is standing around her car. She imagines they are pointing, muttering, hating her, but she can’t see their faces. “It was such a nice night. I wanted to take a drive, enjoy the weather.”
“And you didn’t see the boy?”
“It was a dog.”
The furrow in the officer’s brow deepens.
“When I came down the street, a dog ran in front of the car. I didn’t want to hit it.” Viviane gasps for breath. “I didn’t—I didn’t see the boy.”
“How fast were you driving?”
“The speed limit. Maybe a little under. I never speed.” The officer’s face is round, smooth, and blank. Her skin gleams in the moonlight. Viviane wonders how many times the officer, like the 9-1-1 operator, has heard this story. “I’ve never had a ticket. You can look it up.” Viviane’s breath catches. Tears burn in her eyes. If only she’d stayed on University. If she hadn’t strayed for stars. “I’ve never even been in an accident before.”
Officer Hobbes hands Viviane a wad of tissues. “Give yourself a moment, ma’am.”
“Is he going to die?”
“The doctors will do everything they can.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means they’ll do what they can to save that boy’s life.” Officer Hobbes pats her hand. “We have to finish these questions, and then I can let you get home.”
When the ambulance is gone, when her statement is done, and she has taken and passed a Breathalyzer test, Viviane waits alone for a tow truck. She wonders if she will ever feel safe driving again. The blood is still on the hood. The man who comes—tall, thinning hair, smelling of oil and fuel—is the Mike of Mike’s Family Towing. He asks her for her address and hooks up the car in silence. He helps her into the cab of the truck but never says another word, even when he accepts her payment.
He has photographs taped all over the dash. In one picture, he sits next to a golden-haired woman. Each of them has a chubby baby in their lap. Another picture shows those babies, now boys of six or seven, in waders, fishing with their dad. What is he thinking? Is it pity or disgust? Probably thankful that she or someone like her wasn’t driving on his street. Someone like her. Viviane curls into the seat, turns away from the driver, stares out the window. Tears slide down her cheeks unchecked. She is one of them. Like drunks, rapists, perverts, she has hurt a child. Intentional or not, it doesn’t matter.
Three days.
The car sits like some ancient beast, unblinking and full of wicked patience, waiting for her. Viviane’s only company has been the never-ending drone of her television. There hasn’t been any update about the boy, just a fifteen-second blurb the day after the accident, reporting that a boy struck by a car was at the hospital in critical condition. In the seventy hours since the accident, she has slept two. Each time she drifts to sleep, her dreams are filled with flashes of dark and light, of orchestras that break into a screaming choir at every crescendo, calling Momma, Momma.
Viviane dozes, dreams. The six o’clock news sets her weeping again. She turns off the television, struggles out of her fading green recliner, and walks over to her stereo, a tiny white Bose. She slides her hands over the smooth white plastic and imagines the rich sound of Bach or Bacewicz, Winston or Chopin, filling the dusty corners of the house. Viviane hits play, closes her eyes, and she is behind the piano again. Her fingers ache and tense in sympathy with the music. Heat, either stress or fever, radiates from her bones. The music swells. It is Chopin’s Zyczenie. The Maiden’s Wish. As the mezzo-soprano breaks into song, Viviane sees her piano, shrouded in storage since her body turned against her almost two decades ago, hears the boy calling for his mother.
Viviane turns off the stereo. This maiden won’t get her wish. She picks up the phone to call the local police station. She will call and ask for Officer Hobbes and see if she can find out more about the boy. Instead, when the solid weight of the phone is in her hand, she dials her younger sister, Madeline. It’s the first time they’ve spoken in almost six months.
“Hello, sis,” Viviane says.
“Viviane?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how are you? What’s going on?”
Viviane waits, listens for some hint in Madeline’s voice that she might be angry or annoyed, any indication that she would like an explanation for the time Viviane has spent in the weeks since they last talked. But it isn’t there. Madeline seems surprised when Viviane asks her to come for brunch but promises to be there right away. What would Madeline think if she knew her kindness caused Viviane a twisted disappointment?
A half-hour later, Madeline’s silver Camry pulls into Viviane’s driveway. Her sister pops out of the car, twig-thin and tiny in her heels, blue jeans, and a ruffled white shirt. Her hair is bigger and blonder than Viviane remembers. It’s unsettling, somehow. By the time she makes it out of her chair and to the door, Madeline is there, knocking the rhythm for Shave and a Haircut.
Viviane opens the door and finds Madeline standing with a plump, wriggling infant in her arms.
“Surprise.” Madeline’s voice is stretched by her sweet Alabama twang, and she looks relaxed and delighted. “This is my Jacob’s little Marie.” Madeline bounces the baby and talks to her instead of Viviane. “Yes, you are, aren’t you?” The baby gurgles, and Viviane wonders if it’s happy or if it has gas. “I watch her on Mondays while Jacob’s wife goes shopping.”
Viviane nods and stands aside so her sister can walk in. As Madeline passes, Viviane realizes that her sister is turning into a doppelganger for Mrs. Lacy, the vocal teacher she paid to rid her of her own accent the last summer before she left home for Juilliard, right down to the dome of ash-blond hair. “She’s lovely,” Viviane mutters.
“She looks like her Grandma!”
She looks like every baby Viviane has ever seen, complete with the odd anonymity that can be found only in the chubby, bald, and drooling. The baby doesn’t have even a haze of the carrot-red hair she and Madeline had as little girls. Viviane watches in silence as Madeline takes a seat on the gray sofa, cradling the baby in her arms.
“So, can I help you with brunch, Viv?” Madeline smiles down at the baby, clucks it under the chin.
Viviane shuffles into the kitchen and holds up a tray of sandwiches--ham, with the crusts cut off the way Madeline likes them. Her first attempt at lunch, horribly burnt lasagna, smolders in the trash can on the porch. “I made iced tea, too.”
“Well,” Madeline replies, rising to her feet with a little grunt. “Let me go out and get Marie’s playpen. I don’t think I can eat and balance a baby at the same time these days.”
Schumann, Viviane’s tiger-striped tomcat, jumps onto the counter with a little yowl and heads toward the sandwiches hopefully. Viviane shoos him off the counter, notes his pouting saunter with her first smile in nearly a week. She turns back to the plate and finds Madeline next to her, bouncing the baby.
“Hold her for me, okay?”
Madeline presses the baby into Viviane’s arms and is out the door before Viviane has a chance to protest. The door slams, and Schumann runs hissing out of the kitchen. Marie begins to wail. The baby’s doughy face turns bright pink, and her cornflower-blue eyes squint closed.
“None of that now,” Viviane says.
The baby continues to cry. Viviane remembers visiting Madeline in the hospital on the day that Jacob was born. Viviane had recently signed with the Seattle Philharmonic as a concert pianist. Madeline’s hair was still its natural auburn then, and Viviane was uncomfortable, too conscious of the sterile walls, the medicinal smell, the broad white streak in her own hair, her sister’s giddy, glowing joy. Madeline had told Viviane at the baby shower that she was giving up her teaching position to be a stay-at-home mother. She’d never forget Madeline’s late husband, Joe, giddy with fatherhood and probably still a little tipsy from a birthday party the night before, pressing baby Jacob into Viviane’s arms without any warning and asking her if that wasn’t better than any old piano. She was too polite then to tell him that it wasn’t, that the music was all she needed.
But Viviane doesn’t have music anymore. She’s lost her hands to arthritis. Now she’s lost her heart to a boy and a winter’s night. Marie hiccups, falls silent. Viviane ignores the aching in her elbows and gives the baby a little bounce.
“Gracious, it is hot out there,” Madeline says, struggling back through the door with a collapsible playpen in bright tropical colors. “How are you two getting along?”
“I hit a boy with my car on Friday night. It was dark, and I didn’t see him.”
“What?” The playpen clanks on the tile floor, and Schumann runs across the back of the couch with his claws out. The tearing sound startles the baby, who begins to cry again. “My God, Viviane.”
Madeline comes and lifts Marie out of her arms. Viviane tenses, feels slapped, and watches her sister open the playpen and lay the baby down, a pillow propped on either side. Madeline caresses her granddaughter on the top of her head, then returns to Viviane and stares up into her eyes. Viviane waits for the recriminations, the indignation. Instead, she finds herself pulled into her sister’s arms.
“I’m so sorry.”
“He might die.”
“You can’t think that way,” Madeline replies.
Viviane pushes away, brushes a strand of hair off her face. “We should eat.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I haven’t been hungry for three days.” Viviane wants to break down. She wants to weep and let her sister tell her everything will be all right. But she doesn’t believe it.
Viviane and Madeline sit at the kitchen table and talk about the weather, housekeeping, and the crime rate. The closest they come to talking about the accident is Madeline’s offer to drive her anywhere she needs to go during the day, and to talk to Jacob about driving Viviane on any errands she might have after dusk, since Madeline isn’t driving at night anymore. After an hour, Madeline packs up to meet her daughter-in-law. Viviane kisses her sister on the cheek and gives her great-niece a gentle pat on the belly. Marie slumbers on, oblivious.
“I love you,” Madeline says softly. “Call me if you need me.”
Viviane nods.
“You remember what I said, Viviane. Don’t you blame yourself.” Madeline turns and walks back toward her Camry.
Viviane closes the door. The house is dark. She wonders who else can be to blame. Wonders if little Marie was lying bleeding on the road, would her sister be so generous?
Six days.
Viviane has been living on delivery pizza and Chinese food to avoid her normal daily trip to the grocery store, the produce market. She considers calling Jacob for a trip to the store, but quickly dismisses the thought as she imagines Madeline’s pity for her poor, childless sister. Today she fills a trash bag with leftovers in varying degrees of staleness, wonders if she can stand greasy pizza or tepid Chinese for one more night. The day is bright, moist, and hot. She walks to the curb. The streets are empty with the kids at school and parents off doing the things that parents do. Lunch is peanut butter on wheat bread that will probably mold by the weekend. Schumann is napping on the recliner, and Viviane cannot find a comfortable spot on the couch when the twelve o’clock news starts. Lumps and springs push on every inch of the dull gray fabric that reminds her uncomfortably of the upholstery in the trooper’s car. The normally cheerful co-anchor is solemn.
“We start off the news today with a tragic story. Authorities have reported that seven-year-old Nicholas Prescott, hit by a car on Friday night, has died. Memorial services will be held this Saturday at St. James Cathedral. The family is asking that donations be made to the Nicholas Prescott Memorial Scholarship in lieu of cards or flowers. Over to you, Jack.”
The anchorman is distinguished, silver-haired, and mournful. “Sad news indeed, Meredith. Next in the news, a fire breaks out in Holly Hill, authorities—”
The snap of the TV shutting off makes Viviane jump. The house is perfectly quiet. Even Schumann doesn’t make a peep from where he lies, drowsing in the chair, a little lion on his cushiony precipice. She thinks of calling her sister, being half listened-to and half-listening, of calling the church for the time of the service. Her reflection is a specter in the blank screen of the television, slack and gray – the shade of death.
“I’m a murderer.”
She weeps with her hands half-clenched and aching in her lap. No matter how much she washes, no matter how many coats of lilac lotion she layers on, Viviane still smells iron on her hands.
Seven days.
Officer Hobbes calls to inform Viviane that they need her to come by the station on Monday as part of the continuing investigation into the death of Nicholas Prescott. Viviane writes down a date and time. Before she can hang up, Viviane asks Officer Hobbes for the time of the funeral. Once she’s off the phone, Viviane feeds Schumann and spends the rest of the day in bed.
Eight days.
Viviane takes a cab to St. James Cathedral. The sun is going down, and more people are walking along Robinson than driving on it. When the cab reaches the west side of town the traffic slows to a crawl. Cars are lined up on both sides of the street. Men, women, and children file down the sidewalks toward the weatherworn terra cotta peaks of the cathedral.
“You can let me out here,” Viviane murmurs.
The cab driver pulls over, stares at her in the review mirror. His eyes are hazel—amber brown with brilliant flecks of green. She holds out the money. The twenty feels like a brand of shame as he takes it from her hand. The heels of her shoes grind and scrape on the cement. Despite the crowds of people, the streets are eerily quiet. The chapel is packed, and here the murmuring is like a distant tide. Viviane declines a service program, a small card with a picture of Nicholas smiling, surrounded by toys and trucks. He’s wearing the red shoes.
She finds a seat at the rear of the room. The tiny oak casket is surrounded by white roses. A tall, dark-haired man Viviane guesses is Mr. Prescott stands by the head of the coffin with two willowy teenage girls, weeping. People walk up and pay their respects, place a toy or rose into the coffin. There is no sign of Mrs. Prescott. Organ music begins to play. The music twists in her stomach. She has to do what she came to do and get out of here. Viviane’s knees protest as she stands. She feels a magnetic pull, steps out of the aisle, looks across the room.
Nicholas’s mother isn’t standing by the coffin. She is sitting on the far side of the chapel, in the glow of the candles lit for prayer and hope. The crowds of people part and merge like fish schooling, not random, but by the hand of God, pushing and pulling Vivian toward the mother of the boy she’s killed. She looks up when Viviane clears her throat.
“Mrs. Prescott, I’m—”
“I know who you are.” Mrs. Prescott’s face is blank, but the apples of her cheeks begin to flush.
“I wanted to tell you,” Viviane’s voice is just above a whisper. She can’t seem to catch her breath.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Prescott begins. The woman is barely keeping herself in check. Sweat beads at her hairline, and her voice shakes.
“I’ll go,” Viviane replies.
The woman stands, and Viviane waits for the sting of this woman’s hand on her cheek. Instead, she finds herself being embraced by the mother of the boy she has killed.
Grief has the smell of dying roses. Viviane feels tears burn at the corner of her eyes. Her hands burn, too, aching for music she will never make. The mother grips Viviane, reminding her that the woman’s hands will never hold her child again. Viviane imagines wailing with her, higher and higher, for that which was lost to be returned, till they are singing on the air like sirens.
Bio
Robin Koman is a queer Central Florida native still residing in the mashup of Disney, beach, and swamp that is the land of flowers. She's been published in the anthology Condensed to Flash: World Classics, and journals including Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, Fiction Southeast, Vestal Review, and Duende, among others. Ms. Koman has been nominated for multiple Pushcarts and Best New American Voices. Find her at https://robinkoman.com.
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