I shrugged. I thought of my stash of cash in the attic back home. Would I give my money to Mrs. Polk, forfeit my own escape to set her free and keep the authorities out of our hair — Rebecca’s and mine? The thought crossed my mind. Upstairs I heard Rebecca clanking around, floorboards creaking. I yearned for her to return, to heap praise on me, to thank me from the bottom of her heart, tell me I was her hero, an angel, a saint. Then we could take off together. In New York, people were kissing under mistletoe, dancing and pouring champagne and falling in love. And where was I? I was alone in a basement with a woman tied to a pipe. I didn’t want to watch Mrs. Polk cry anymore. I had played my part well, I thought. I stood up, dusted the dirt off my backside and gestured with the gun up at the ceiling. “She just wants to help,” I said. I could go to jail, I realized, if something went wrong. Still, I wasn’t afraid. I put the gun back down.
“She’s right, you know,” Mrs. Polk began. “That lady. Your friend?” Her voice was high and monotonous and clicked with phlegm as she spoke. “My boy wasn’t lying about his father. Mitch, my husband, he had bad habits. You know, strange tastes. I thought some men were just like that. I never got used to it, but you have to understand. I couldn’t just leave. You take an oath when you get married to honor and obey your husband. That’s what I did. Where was I supposed to go?” Her eyes glittered in the weak light. She swallowed, looked up at the ceiling and cleared her throat. Where was Rebecca? “At first I thought Mitch was just checking on him in his sleep, like a good father would,” Mrs. Polk went on. “Like he just wanted to be sure his son was safe and sound in bed. We all do that. But he’d spend a while. Bit by bit, longer each time, I guess. I don’t know how often. Sometimes I’d feel him getting out of bed. Sometimes I’d just feel him when he’d come back, and he’d kiss me or hold me, and you know. We hadn’t really been together since Lee’d been born. I’d lost interest. We’d lost interest. But suddenly Mitch wanted to be with me again. I was flattered. But I started getting these infections down there. Oh God,” she sighed, “in my private parts. The doctors said I had to wash more. I figured it was my fault. And then I wondered if Mitch had brought something home from a trip he took one summer to visit his brother in Toronto, or so he said. The clap? I don’t know what I was thinking. But I kept getting these infections. Then one night I got up in the middle of the night and went and looked and I saw Mitch in Lee’s bed. At first I had no clue what they were doing, and I just went back to bed. It didn’t dawn on me right away, I swear to you. You don’t expect your husband’s going to do a thing like that. It’s a hard thing to believe. But as time went on, I came to accept it. It couldn’t have hurt that much, I said to myself. Couldn’t be that bad, I thought. And Lee never said anything, so I figured it was OK. Maybe I’d been confused all along about men, I thought. Maybe all men do this with their sons. You start thinking that. It could be true. What did I know? And Lee seemed fine. Quiet kid, good kid, decent grades, sweet boy. Barely said a word, played nice with the neighbors, nothing out of order. So I got used to it. And then I figured, if he was clean, it would be better for all of us. Maybe I wouldn’t get those infections. They hurt, you know, when Mitch and I were together. Lee wasn’t a big eater anyway, and I got to know what foods ran through him which ways,” she said, “to make the enemas easier. It sounds funny, I know. I knew what I was doing wasn’t quite right. But Lee was such a sweet kid, brave, you know, he didn’t question it. He always just wanted to make everybody happy. He’d say, ‘I just don’t want anybody to be mad at me.’ Made me all kinds of pretty cards at school for Christmas and Valentine’s. Good boy, back then, I thought. So I put on a happy face. What else could I do? They don’t tell you about these things. They don’t prepare you for problems like that.”
“They?” I asked.
Mrs. Polk didn’t answer. She just bent forward, shook her head back and forth, stunned, it seemed, by her own words. I heard Rebecca’s footsteps through the house again, even-tempoed but slow. Mrs. Polk looked up toward the ceiling, huffed, fighting back more tears. “Who do you tell? I wasn’t going to tell anyone. You do the best you can. You know what happens when you have children? Your husband never looks at you the same. I blamed myself, you know. I ate too much. And Mitch didn’t find me attractive anymore. We hadn’t been together in years before that started, with Lee. Then it just became habit, the way things went. I was alone all day, you know. I was a housewife. I had nobody else, you understand. Mitch didn’t talk to me, just came home, ate his dinner, drank, and I was just a stranger in the room, a nuisance. He could barely stand me. But after he went to bed with Lee, he’d come to me. And it was like a big burden had been lifted. He was relaxed. And it felt good, how he’d hold me. He loved me then. He was tender. I knew he loved me. He would show it. He’d whisper and kiss me and say nice things. It was the way it had been before, when we were young and happy and in love, and it felt good to me. Is that so wrong? To want to feel that way? I even got pregnant once, but I lost it. I didn’t care. I had my husband back. You wouldn’t understand,” she said, looking up at me. “You’re young. You haven’t had your heart broken.”
But I understood her perfectly. Of course I did. Who wouldn’t?
She began to cry again, solemnly this time.
“There, there,” I said, the first time in my life I had ever sincerely tried to comfort anyone. We sat in silence for a moment. Then we heard the door open, footsteps. We both turned to watch Rebecca float down the stairs, carrying a pad of paper and a pen.
“Will you untie me now?” Mrs. Polk looked at me. “I’ve said everything.”
Rebecca looked at me suspiciously. I nodded. “It’s true,” I said, all my rage now gone. Mrs. Polk’s eyes darted nervously from Rebecca’s face to mine, then down at the gun on the floor.
“We’ll untie you once you agree to our terms,” Rebecca said. “And sign a contract. Eileen,” she looked at me incredulously. “What did she say?” I wasn’t going to repeat to Rebecca what Mrs. Polk had said. There was no polite way to phrase it. Rebecca grunted in frustration. “Eileen,” she whined. To Mrs. Polk she said, “You’ll have to write it all down, or else our deal is off.”
“What deal?” Mrs. Polk was now clear-eyed, flushed more with anger than fear.
“The deal is you admit what you’ve done and we don’t kill you.” Rebecca was angry now, too, at Mrs. Polk and at me, it seemed. “Hand me the gun, Eileen,” Rebecca said gruffly. I did as I was told. I didn’t want her to turn against me. She stood back looking down at Mrs. Polk, as I had done earlier. “Tell me what you told her,” she insisted, holding the gun awkwardly, her elbows bent outward, her fingers closed over the barrel. Mrs. Polk looked at me, as though I could save her.
“Be careful,” I told Rebecca. She rolled her eyes.
“Rita,” she said. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Shoot me,” the woman cried. “I don’t care anymore.” I could barely breathe under my wool scarf. I lowered it from my face and wiped my sweaty cheeks with the cuff of my coat.
“I know you,” said Mrs. Polk suddenly, dismayed. “You’re the girl from Moorehead.”
Rebecca turned to me, shocked. “What are you doing, Eileen?” I fumbled to pull the scarf back up.
“She already knew my name,” I said in my defense. “Rebecca.”
What happened next is still unclear, but as far as I could tell, Rebecca took one hand off the gun to pull back the cuffs of her robe, and when she gripped the gun again, her hands shook, she fumbled and the gun fell and fired as it hit the floor. The blast stopped us all from breathing. I crouched down and froze. Rebecca hid her face in her hands and turned away from us. Mrs. Polk was silent, drew her fat legs up to her large chest, exposing her fleshy calves and knees. Outside the dog began to bark again. And then, the blast still echoing in my ears, we three looked at one another.