Her eyes expanded. “My car? What did you do?”
Paul stepped forward, jumped onto the bottom step, thrust the can at her, and yelled: “Fuck you, bitch,” and then sprayed black paint on her face.
The No! wasn’t even out of Tyler’s mouth before the paint hit her. She rocked back as if struck with something, tripped on the entryway ledge, and fell.
Paul stood in place for a moment, and then leaped off the step and scrambled toward his car. He screamed for Tyler to follow him, to come on and get in before the cops showed up but Tyler couldn’t move. Sasha wasn’t screaming—she was writhing on the floor and sobbing. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. At least she’ll get the message.
Paul’s car rumbled to life and he screamed out the window for Tyler to come the fuck on already. Tyler shook himself out of his empathetic trance and ran to the car.
“It’s not my fault!” Sasha cried. “Not my fault!”
Tyler hopped in the car but didn’t shut the door. “Wait. We can’t just leave.”
Paul laughed. “Right. We can drive straight to the police station.”
“You shouldn’t have sprayed her.”
“She’s lucky I didn’t use the persuader. Shut the fucking door.”
Sasha’s pained scream grabbed Tyler with cold, invisible hands and squeezed his stomach. He stepped out of the car, shut the door. “I can’t leave her like this.”
“You’re as nuts as she is.” Then Paul’s car jolted forward and he peeled out, howling down the hill deeper into Trailer Trash Town. Only the two black skid marks from his tires remained.
Slowly, Tyler walked back up Sasha’s lawn. She was still laying in the open doorway, sobs pouring out of her. Her legs rolled back and forth with her sobs as if the physical expression of her pain was something experienced throughout her entire body.
I did this.
I caused this.
She deserved it, that other voice offered. Now you can make your move and get this bitch to do what’s right.
He walked up the steps. “Sasha, I’m—”
She sprang up, on all fours, screamed, and frantically tried crab-walking backward. In the light over the entrance, the black paint resembled a giant smudge like she had rubbed her face against a car engine. Her eyes twitched frantically: some of the paint had seeped into them. Would that blind her?
He approached her quickly, knelt beside her. “Sasha, relax, please.”
She stopped trying to back up, afraid perhaps she’d misjudge her direction and spill down the stairs. She shrunk away from him but her rushing tears prevented another scream. She gagged on a wad of phlegm and then cried even harder.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I freaked out, that’s all, and Paul, he’s nuts, this was … ah, shit, your face. I’m so sorry.”
“None of this is my fault.” She buried her face in the crook of her arm.
He wanted to touch her but he was afraid she might scream or try to get away. “Let me help you to the bathroom. Let me help you get cleaned up.”
Her sobbing eased. “Why?”
“Because I deserve to be arrested,” he said.
She thought about that for a moment. “It’s upstairs on the right.”
Carefully, Tyler helped Sasha stand and allowed her to use him as a crutch as she took the stairs one step at a time like an old woman. Even if he did end up arrested, this was the right thing to do. Stupid maybe, but the right thing nonetheless.
He sat her on the toilet and wet a hand towel in the tub. He dumped some body wash onto the towel and started to clean the paint from her face. She let him do it for a moment and then she took the towel and started scrubbing vigorously at her eyes. She scrubbed and wept and Tyler felt so small, pathetic and helpless that he didn’t notice Sasha’s mother was standing in the doorway until she spoke.
“I was afraid this might happen,” the woman said. “We must perform the love child rites immediately.”
2
Anthony left the First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered with a startlingly clear image of what he had to do. It wouldn’t be pretty; but it was what God expected. Tyler’s car (keys in the ignition) was waiting. He drove home and went immediately to his wife.
He flicked on the overhead fan light in the bedroom. Chloe lay in a shriveled lump under the sheets while her sister Stephanie was sprawled out, fully clothed, next to Chloe on the comforter.
“Wake up,” he said.
Chloe was so heavily drugged that there was no chance she would simply wake up, but Stephanie came out of her doze with an awkward spasm. She sat up, squinted against the light. “Anthony? What time is it?”
“I need to talk to my wife,” he said.
She hesitated at his tone. “She’s … asleep.”
“No, Stephanie, she’s not. She’s fucking drugged.”
The f-bomb was a cold splash of water on her face. After a moment, Stephanie’s mouth slowly closed and then she was fumbling for words but managing only to produce nonsensical burps of vowel sounds.
Anthony moved toward her so quickly and with, no doubt, a slightly crazed expression on his face, that Stephanie scrambled off the bed, smacked the nightstand, and stumbled into the wall. She raised her hands slightly, either in a gesture meant to calm him or to protect herself.
“I need to talk to my wife,” he said again.
“She’s not well, Anthony, you know that. You’re only going to upset her.”
“Ha!” he said so loudly it echoed around the room. “I doubt anything could upset her, not in this condition.”
“She’s almost due for her nighttime pills.”
Stephanie tried to slide across the wall to go around him, but he seized her arm.
“No more pills.”
“But Dr. Carroll.”
“And no more Dr. Carroll, either.”
She started to respond, rethought her approach. “What’s gotten into you?”
The question was a tranquilizer of its own. His grip loosened on her arm and then his hand dropped free. The pressure that had gathered near his temples eased. His jaw relaxed and he realized he had been clenching it. What had gotten into him? That was easy to answer, though not likely easy for his sister-in-law to accept. She had her loyalty and no matter what he said right now, she would continue to opine how Chloe needed her pills, how devastated she was, how not just her heart had been broken but her soul as well. She was, as Ellis phrased it, “another obstacle to empowerment.”
And you know what we do obstacles, don’t you? Ellis had asked.
Find a way around them?
Ellis smiled. That doesn’t sound very empowering. No, when we cross an obstacle, we break right through it.
“I’m sorry,” Anthony said. It was always the best response to a woman no matter the situation. “I’ve been really stressed. Everything seems like it’s spiraling out of control. Like I’m going crazy.”
She resisted her empathetic side for a moment, perhaps afraid this was some kind of set-up, and then touched his cheek. “You poor man. You’ve been carrying this burden all by yourself.”
Burden. Was that a coincidence or God’s intrusion? Was there a difference?
Her hand was soft. He hadn’t shaved in days. He’d completely forgotten about shaving until just now. Hopefully, Delaney wasn’t insulted.
“I’ve been so concerned about Chloe that I haven’t tried to help you. I’m sorry, Anthony. I truly am.”
Tears threatened for a moment; he forced them back. Stephanie could be annoying (sometimes talking his ear off for an hour or more when Chloe wasn’t around to take the phone), but she was a good sister to his wife, a good aunt to his kids. “I really just need some time alone with her, okay?”