Behind The Hands That Kill

NINETEEN

If Victor would’ve answered any other way, despite how much I love him, I would’ve walked away and never looked back. When it comes to him, I can forgive a lot of things—even his plan with Niklas—but I could never overlook a man so cold that he could murder a woman carrying his child, no matter how young or confused or brainwashed he was—I just couldn’t. But I didn’t believe it in my heart that he could be so vicious.

“Artemis will be looking for you, Izabel,” he says. I feel like it’s something he’s wanted to say since he walked through the doorway. “When she finds out that you are still alive—”

“I’ll be waiting for her,” I cut in.

“You need protection.”

“No,” I say quickly, “I don’t. And I meant what I said about babysitters in my driveway, Victor. If I find out that anyone is watching me…”

He stands there, waiting for the rest, but I decide to leave it at that, let him draw his own conclusions, because any one of them are possible. And I think he knows it.

Finally he nods, accepting my decision, and fighting against it inside his heart. I see it in his eyes, the fight.

I step up closer to him, push up on my toes and kiss the edge of his mouth. “I know this will be hard for you to hear,” I say, “but I want you to know that…I’m glad things turned out the way they did. Everything, from all the secrets you kept from me, to the moment Artemis slid that blade across my throat”—I touch my wound with my fingertips—“I’m grateful for it.”

Victor’s eyebrows draw inward; he shakes his head with disbelief, refusal, but I place my hand on his chest again to stop him from saying what he’s thinking.

“It’s usually unimaginable pain and hardship,” I go on, “that ultimately makes us see who we really are, who we were meant to be, who we’ve always been deep inside...” My hand falls away from his chest. I want to tell him more, about the person awake inside of me, but I can’t. I take a step back and say instead, “Artemis can’t kill me, Victor. I’m convinced of this fact. If I was supposed to die by her hands, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

“Sarai?” I hear Dina call from her bedroom down the hall.

I look toward the hall briefly, and then back at Victor, who seems anxious underneath that quiet exterior—he knows our conversation is going to end long before it’s finished.

And that’s how I want it.

“I need to help Dina,” I say.

He nods, though with disappointment.

“How has she been?” he asks.

“Not well. She’s getting worse. I think the diagnosis, just knowing what’s going to happen to her, is accelerating the disease.”

He nods again.

“It always happens like that,” I add. “You’re fine, maybe a few minor symptoms, but nothing debilitating, and then six months after the diagnosis, you’re dead.” I tap the side of my head with my finger. “Most of it is in the head—maybe all of it—I just wish I could convince Dina of that.”

Yet again, Victor simply nods. It’s something else I think he needs to work on: developing his casual side, so maybe one day he and I can have a meaningful conversation about the many flavors of ice cream, or why music moves souls, or how nothing can escape a black hole. We’ve talked about many things in the short time we’ve been together, but never, that I can recall, about the seemingly insignificant things in life, things that have no bearing on his profession—things that, to me, are anything but insignificant, and matter a great deal.

“I’ll be right there,” I call out to my mother.

Then I push up on my toes again, and kiss Victor on the mouth.

“I love you, Victor.”

“And I love you…”

I sense that he wants to say so much more, but he forces it down.

“Sarai, honey…” Dina calls.

“I have to go,” I tell Victor.

Reluctantly, he steps outside; the light from the porch touches his shoulder, leaving one side of his face in shadow.

“Victor,” I say, before he moves down the last step.

He stops, turns to look at me.

“There’s something that I’d like to know,” I say.

“Anything,” he tells me.

I pause. “How did you get me out of that cage? How did you save me? I don’t remember much after—”

“I did not save you,” he admits, regretfully. “I spared you, but I did not save you. It was out of my hands.”

That surprises me; I stare at him, blank-faced, trying to remember that night, any details at all, but I can’t.

“Then who did?”

Victor’s gaze strays, and he glances at the steps momentarily.

“Someone from The Order,” he says.

My breath catches. “Ours?” I ask, hesitantly. “Or Vonnegut’s?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment; he doesn’t even seem fully there.

“Victor?” I turn my head at an angle, looking down at him from the top step in a sidelong manner. “Ours or Vonnegut’s?” I repeat. In my heart, I already know the answer—I just need to understand it—and if it’s true, then there is a shit-storm of new problems that lay ahead.

Still, he doesn’t answer, and I know now that he doesn’t need to.

“Are you safe?” I ask him. “Don’t lie to me, Victor—do they know where you are?”

“They have always known, Izabel.” His voice is calm, his words feel almost…apocalyptic in nature. “It is only a matter of time that all of this”—he waves a hand in the air—“all of this freedom, this life, will come to an end. I have told you, since the beginning, that until Vonnegut is dead and I am in control of his Order, none of us are free; we are but a breath away from the end of everything. And no walls or secrets or disguises can hide us forever. Vonnegut must be identified, and eliminated, before he eliminates us.”

“That’s the real reason you’re worried about me being here, isn’t it?” I go down two steps toward him. “Artemis has nothing to do with it, does she?”

He nods.

“I am confident in you where Artemis is concerned, yes.” He steps up to meet me. “But you should know something.”

“Tell me,” I urge him.

He pauses, and then says with a hint of disbelief in his voice, “The price on your head is even greater than mine.”

I feel my eyes and forehead creasing with lines of confusion; my head rears back.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

After a moment, Victor admits, “Neither do I.”

We stand together in silence, though the thoughts in my head are loud. How can this be true? Why? Why would The Order want me more than Victor Faust? For a moment I can’t find my own voice, and when I finally do, I can’t bring myself to use it.

Cradling the back of my head in the palm of his big hand, Victor leans forward and touches his lips to my forehead. My cheekbones. My chin. My mouth. I fight the urge—the need—to grab him and give him every reason to take me right where we stand. His kiss leaves me breathless, but I don’t show it. His touch, and his closeness, does things to me that I know I’ll never be able to fully control, but this time I’m able to tame it.

Then he walks down the steps, and I watch him go, his tall, athletic figure disappearing in the shadows covering the sidewalk cast by the trees.

And then he’s gone.

He asked me to marry him…No, I can’t think about that right now; I can’t carry that possibility in my heart yet when I have so much else I need to do and become and resolve and accept, first.

I look up from my thoughts, hoping to catch one last glimpse of him before the darkness swallows him completely, but he’s not there and I knew he wouldn’t be.

A time ago, I would’ve stopped him, I would’ve made sure that Victor knew this wasn’t goodbye. But things have changed. My love for him hasn’t, but everything else around me has. Everything else inside of me has. And in Victor, I see the same—he is changed; he is still changing. Can our love for each other evolve with the changes? Can our bond stand the test of time and we still come out together at the end, stronger, unbreakable? The odds are that we may never know, because we might not live long enough to find out.

I have so many questions that I could’ve asked him, that most people in my shoes would have. Questions about exactly what happened that night, about who saved me, why I was saved, why I’m still free. I want to know these things. But not yet. I have something more important I need to do before I can even begin to start thinking about any of that. Someone more important.

My gaze remains fixed on the dark sidewalk, my memory capturing the moment he traveled it, savoring every detail of the man I would die and kill for. The man I would kill, if that’s what I needed to do to take away his pain.

Shutting my eyes, shutting out the memory of his face and replacing it with that of my mother’s, I move slowly up the steps and go back inside the house. With a heavy heart. With a heavy purpose.

“I thought you left me,” Dina says, as I enter her bedroom.

The sheet she lays on has been soiled; she can barely move her arms anymore, and walking herself to the restroom has been out of the realm of possible since about a month ago, according to her doctor. She had been hiding it from me for over a year, not wanting me to worry. The last time I saw her she seemed fine; she could do just about anything I could do, but the disease recently took the inevitable turn for the worse, and with ALS there is no turning it back.

“I’m here,” I tell her softly, lifting her head with one hand and readjusting the pillow beneath it.

With difficulty, I manage to change the sheets and clean her up, without moving her from the bed.

“I’m sorry you have to do this for me, baby girl.”

“None of that,” I tell her sternly, covering her from the waist down with a clean sheet. “And I’ll never leave you again. I’m staying right here to take care of you.”

“Nah!” she argues. “You can’t be staying here, wiping my butt every day, Sarai—I won’t let you.”

“How are you gonna stop me?”

She frowns. For a second, I think I chose the worst words I could say to someone with this particular disease, but she eases my mind with a weak smile.

“You’ve had such a hard life, baby girl; it hurts my heart to think about what you’ve been through.”

“Nothing compared to other people,” I say; I wipe her forehead and face with a warm, wet cloth.

“And none of that,” she argues in return; I know she wants to shake her finger at me but she can’t raise her hand. “You’ve suffered a lot more than most, Sarai, so don’t do that. You’ve got every right to be mad as hell at the world.”

“Of course I’m mad,” I say, “but I’m doing something about it, Dina. There are women in those fucked-up countries who get stoned to death for getting raped; shot or hung for showing too much skin; eight-year-old girls murdered by their forty-year-old husbands during sex—they can’t do anything about it. But I can…”

“You’ve got that look in your eye, baby girl.”

I blink back into focus, and look at my hand holding the wash cloth near her face; my knuckles are white from gripping it so harshly.

Relaxing my hand, I say, “What look?” pretending not to know, and I go back to swabbing her face.

Dina looks up at me through eyes framed by deep wrinkles and exhaustion; her curly gray-blonde hair is laying softly against the pillow, her hairline damp from the wash cloth. “The same one you had a long time ago, right after I got you back. I’ll never forget it, that day you sat at the table, watching that news broadcast about that billionaire, Arthur Hamburg—thought you were gonna go after him right then.”

I shoot her a look of surprise. “You knew about that?”

Dina smiles weakly. “Well, you admitted to me that you’d killed a man in Los Angeles. And I never forgot the way you looked at that man on the news. Eventually I figured it out, or at least I thought I did—I had my hunches. Didn’t know for sure until just now.”

I nod, and then set the wash cloth on the nightstand. I take her hand into both of mine and I caress it because I sense this is a moment in which, if she could, she’d want to hold my hand.

“What are you planning to do?” she asks. “I know, honey, that I can’t be asking you too much about what you do, but I—”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Dina.” Gently I squeeze her hand.

She thanks me with the tender look in her eyes.

“I have a feelin’ you’re gonna be makin’ me roll around in my grave,” she says. “Look, I know you live a dangerous life, that every day you step out a door that it could be your last, and I know better than to ask you to stop doing it—I know you’ll never stop. But there are some things I never want you to do, and that look in your eye just a few seconds ago when you were talkin’ about those fucked-up countries, well, baby, it really scares me something awful. Promise me you won’t go over there. I see it all the time on the news: innocent people kidnapped by those extremist bastards; the beheadings—Sarai, I just can’t be at peace knowing that the next time it could be you.”

I shake my head, squeeze her hand again. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Dina,” I lie, because I have to. “I won’t be going over there, I promise.” I smile down at her, then lean in and kiss her forehead; I bring her hand up afterward and kiss the top of it.

I don’t tell her anything else, and thankfully she doesn’t ask. I don’t want to have to lie to her anymore.

“Sarai,” she says softly, “do you remember that day your mom’s boyfriend came to my house looking for you?”

I smile. And then I can’t help but laugh when I picture her standing at the door with her shotgun.

“Yeah, I remember.”

She smiles, too.

“I’da blown his greasy head clean off, and I would’na blinked or felt bad about it afterwards. I’da done anything for you.”

“I know,” I say softly, and pat the top of her hand.

But I’m no longer smiling, because I feel like I know where she’s going with this; I know what she’s going to say next.

Her smile fades too, replaced by something more somber, proving my prediction right.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, baby,” she says, “but have you…made a decision?”

I can’t look at her eyes.

“I know it’s a selfish thing to ask of you,” she says, “and it’s wrong, and terrible, and maybe even unforgivable, but when you peel off those layers and see it for what it really is, you have to know that it’s not wrong, just unbearably difficult. It’s mercy and compassion, Sarai.”

She goes on, pleading her case:

“I’ve lived a long and good life—shorter than I’d planned; I pictured myself with cottony-white hair, a sunken-in face because I didn’t care about having my dentures in anymore, and me sitting in a rocking chair just like my great-grandmother used to sit in on her front porch. Ninety-one. That’s how long I planned to live. I’m a few decades short of that goal, but that’s all right. I’m happy with the time I had.” Her voice begins to waver; I squeeze her hand more firmly. “I-I know I shouldn’t ask you…I’m sorry, Sarai, I’m just desperate. I-I don’t want to be trapped in this body for whatever time I have left, unable to move, to speak—it scares me more than anything. If I could…baby girl, if I could do it myself, I would”—anger rises up in her voice—“I should’ve done it when I when I was able!”

I move my hand from hers and place it gently on her chest. “Calm down, momma; everything’s gonna be all right.”

Moisture coats her eyes, and she manages a fragile smile.

“You are my momma,” I tell her, knowing it’s what made her smile. “You always have been.”

“But what kind of mother would ask her daughter what I’ve asked of you?” Now she’s the one who can’t look at me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I tell her, and take her hand again. Then I swallow, unsure of what I’m about to tell her, but I do it anyway. “I’ve done it before,” I say. “I’ve…”

Suddenly, the memory coats my mind like the tears in Dina’s eyes.

I pulled back the plunger, drawing another spoonful of heroin into the needle. Both of my eyes throbbed; the left side of my face felt bigger than the right; I was so angry, so tired of nursing my mother every day, feeding her veins because she couldn’t find them herself anymore; tired of the smell; tired of these men raping me and beating me when Javier was gone. The one that just left, thought it necessary to rape me in front of my mother. And she just laid there on the bed, her back to us, too high to move a hand against him to stop him. So that extra spoonful of heroin, I knew in my heart was too much. I knew her emaciated body couldn’t take another one so soon, that her barely-beating heart would fail the moment the heroin touched it.

I knew…

“Sarai, baby,” my mother whispered to me; her body odor, mixed with strong perfume and cigarettes, choked me as she laid next to me on the soiled bed. “You forgive me, don’t you? I never meant for any of this to happen. I just…wasn’t thinking straight.” I saw the whites of her eyes briefly in the darkness as the heroin began to swim through her bloodstream. She smiled euphorically as if she’d touched the Face of God. I set the needle down on the tray at the foot of the bed.

“It’s OK, Mom,” I whispered back, and loosened the tourniquet from her wiry arm. “I forgive you…”

I force myself back into the present.

And I look right into Dina’s eyes.

“At least you have the courage to ask,” I say to her, the memory lingering on the fringes of my mind, and my heart.

I kiss her hand.

“Will you play the piano for me, baby girl?”

“Of course I will, momma. Of course I will…”