With steady fingers, I push the needle through his skin, pulling the thread through in a neat line. I pride myself on stitchwork that is more precise than the city’s best surgeons. Maybe I’ve had more practice. I’m not sure what that says about the state of our city’s crime level.
I’m halfway through when I furnish him with a response.
“Maybe it’s both.”
Triumph flashes in his eyes, so I cut it off.
“Or maybe I just enjoy beating people half to death.”
No one knows the real reason I do this. And no one other than Gian, Rocco and Durante knows who I really am. I pay them a lot of money to keep my biggest secret.
Not even Cristiano knows, and he’s my don, my boss.
I finish up the stitching and snip the thread, then sit back on my heels.
“Is he good to go?” Gian asks.
I nod once then get to my feet.
I keep my back turned as Gian and Rocco help the kid to his feet. I sense his gaze lingering on me, the way they all do before they leave me as undefeated as I was when they arrived.
Then footsteps hit the stairwell, loosening my shoulders.
When it’s only me in the room, covered in my opponent’s blood and surrounded by surgical instruments, I can finally breathe.
Reaching my hands to the back of my head, I stretch out my biceps and roll my neck. Then I lower to one of the rusty chairs and set to work unwrapping the cloth from my hands.
Most all of the blood is his, not mine, and a comforting sense of satisfaction fills me knowing I fixed him up—I undid the damage.
But the triumph is short-lived.
My eyes are glued to each length of cloth as I unwrap it, and each layer reminds me how I’d learned too young that some damage can never be undone.
Erin
Distance makes the heart grow fonder because it gives you just enough space to forget all the crap.
Put another way, it isn’t yearning that keeps love alive; it’s bare-faced denial.
I ponder that as I embark on day thirty of living under my mother’s roof again for the first time since I was twenty-two, with a pending divorce, no money to my name, and a teenage daughter who isn’t speaking to me a whole lot.
My fingers shake lightly as Mom bustles back and forth, tidying up the invisible mess I know better than to leave around the house.
The sight of her in the reflection of the mirror makes it hard to apply makeup without impaling my eyeball with a stick of kohl.
She looks older than I remember. Frailer, with lower energy and a similarly low level of tolerance for humanity. I supposeher distaste for my situation and her inability to hide it makes me feel a little less guilty for imposing on her quiet, stress-free life.
But, regardless of how uncomfortable it is—for me, anyway. Mom dotes on Paige like she’s the daughter she never had—I literally have nowhere else to go. I need to work, I need to attend lawyer meetings, and I need free childcare.
Mom has spent the last fourteen years making me feel terrible about how I’d chosen to raise my daughter on the opposite side of the country—even though she fully supportedmy husband’sdream of moving to California, and failed to visit us even once—so I figure this is her chance to make up for lost time.
And I will grit my teeth and take whatever barbed comments she throws at me until I can earn enough to afford a place for Paige and me.
When she plumps up a cushion I’d sat against last night and lets out an agitated huff, I get the hint and give up on the makeup. It’s time to grovel.
“Are you sure this is okay, Mom? Looking after Paige while I go to the mediation?”
She turns to me with a resigned look on her face. It makes me feel like I’ve wronged her personally, historically, and on a spiritual level.
