Ria
A car honked and Ria lurched forward past the last of the shops. Turning on the radio, she shuffled through the stations. Slow songs, happy songs, news. Another brawl between rival gangs downstate. She dreaded the day Liam and Jacob were old enough to drive. Living in a small town kept those kinds of problems at arms-length.
Hands at ten and two, she eased into the driveway careful not to topple the bags in the back seat. Dammit. That letter to her Aunt was still in her purse. Checking her wrist, she swung open the door. The groceries could wait. There was enough time to get to the mailbox at the end of the street and get back home to work.
Up ahead, a man knelt in an empty flowerbed beside the sold sign stuck on his front lawn. Dry grass and mud clung to his jeans. As Ria approached on the sidewalk, he glanced up.
“Demar,” he said, flashing a smile.
“Ria, from 124.” She stopped and pointed behind her. Though they’d only met briefly, she knew who he was. Pewter hoops hung from his ears; his neck was inked like a rattlesnake. He didn’t blend in around here.
He mopped his brow with the back of his hand. “The landscaping around here is unbelievable. I’m trying to catch up.”
She smiled back. Good luck. A flat of purple and yellow chrysanthemums lay by the sign. The colour would irritate her neighbours more than they cared to admit, and the idea of that pleased her.
“Can you pass me a plant?” he asked.
Ria bent over to pick one up. Dark spots blurred her vision. Bit of dizziness. Great way to impress the new neighbour. Wishing she’d grabbed lunch downtown earlier, she knelt on the grass.
“Put your head down,” he said, and placed his hand gently on her shoulder.
She leaned her head toward her lap. Beads of moisture ran down her forehead, stinging her eyes. Demar sat beside her and passed over his bottle of water. Awkward? Kind? She could smell the sweat on his shirt. Flustered, she pointed to his garden.
“You’re planting the flowers too close,” she blurted.
“What do you mean?” he said.
She gently removed a floret from his left hand, and a trowel from his right. She dug a little hole, with more space than he planned. She planted it, patted the earth, turned and smiled.
“Hey, that looks way better,” he said. “Thanks.”
That ice cream in the back seat would be turning to soup. As she got up to go, a cat threaded himself around her ankles, hoping for a scratch. Demar pushed it aside and she said goodbye and crossed the road. Less than a block away, she reached the mailbox.
Pop, pop.
She stopped in her tracks. She knew that sound. Gunshots.
She dove behind the red Escalade. Should she move? Stay put? She checked her arms and legs. No blood. No bullet holes.
Crouched on her heels, she peered through the back of the SUV’s tinted windows. Where was the shooter? She peeked around the side of the bumper, panic clawing at her chest. Demar was staggering backwards. Blood soaked his t-shirt. He fell to the ground. Half his cheek was missing.
She wretched, then sat. Breathe. Focus. The phone. Where was it? There. In her purse. As she struggled to unzip it, she heard the shriek of brakes, violent honking beside her. A car door flung open.
“What the hell happened?” a neighbour yelled from his driveway.
“I don’t know.” She could hardly breathe.
Her hand trembled as she held her device. Her boys. Then someone was screaming. Was it her? Stop and get it together. They were safe in school. She wished she could blink and disappear, be with them, hug them, not let them out of her sight. Instead, she punched at the screen.
“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”
“Someone was shot.”
“Where are you ma’am?”
“Highland Avenue.”
“Ma’am? Stay on the line. Did you see it?”
“I didn’t see anyone, please hurry.”
Ria disconnected. She peered around the bumper of the SUV again. Demar lay on the sidewalk. She scanned the trees around the house for the shooter. As she crept forward, her adrenaline surged, a wave of fear at what was lurking in front of her.
“Demar,” she called out. Twice.
He mumbled, his fingers twitching.
The neighbour shouted, “Get back.”
She darted behind the SUV. Soaked in sweat, she pinched the bridge of her nose. A gnawing, familiar feeling rose in her throat. She’d only felt it once, yet it had left a permanent scar living deep into her subconscious. Her phone rang. She put it on silent, lay down on the road and closed her eyes.
Within a minute, sirens wailed in the distance. Breathe, up, move. She gripped the strap of her purse and stumbled along the sidewalk.
The street was mayhem. People streamed from porches, running across lawns, trampling flowers. Two police cars were parked diagonally across the road, their red lights revolving, colour bouncing off the windows around them. Ria looked across the road. Red brick, black front door with a bay window to the left, painted shutters. 142 Highland Avenue. Her own house—only eight doors away—looked identical, except for the basketball net, the bikes and the man bleeding out on the driveway.
Neighbours prattled on the pavement. She pressed two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was going at least a hundred beats a minute. Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep breathing. A uniformed officer unfurled a roll of yellow tape and strung it between two trees on the boulevard.
“All of you,” he shouted. “Get back.”
Ria took in the scene. In front of her lay Demar, legs bent at an impossible angle, blood pooling on the sidewalk. The hole in the side of his face was deep, uneven. White. She could see a piece of bone. To the right, a firetruck, and the ambulance. To the left, a nondescript car stopped outside the perimeter. Two men in plain clothes hopped out, ducked under the tape, and spoke to the officer stationed in the middle of the street. She pulled her phone from her purse and took a few pictures. Radios cackled. Voices called out. Words. Phrases. She rocked forward slightly and tried to catch them all.
After the stretcher rolled by, paramedics pumping Demar’s chest, she pocketed her phone. Behind her, the crowd had thinned. A few neighbours lingered on the lawn deep in conversation. Ria shouldered her purse and headed home.
Clutching a hand to her chest, she collapsed in the soft leather chair behind her desk. Struggling to regain control, she flipped on her playlist from Spotify. The blend of her favourite oldies calmed her. When the tightness in her chest eased, she picked up the phone. It rang twice.
“Catskill Fire Department. How can I help you?”
Jim had voice made for radio. Deep. Smooth. Calming. “Honey, it’s me. Our neighbour got shot.”
“Sorry, what?”
Ria knew she sounded panicked, so she slowed herself down. “In his driveway, the guy who moved in.”
“When?”
She looked at the ceiling. She could see an empty space where Demar’s cheek should have been. “This afternoon, just now.”
“What?” There was shuffling and then a door slammed. “Listen, we just got back to the station from a townhouse fire. It was a mess. I’m a mess. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She took a breath, trying to squash her irritation. “Can you find anything out? Maybe ask someone?”
He sighed. “I’ll keep my ears to the ground.”
“What time will you be home?”
A pause. “No idea.”
She suspected as much yet forced herself to stay focused on the reason for her call. “See you at dinner, then? Call me if you hear anything.”
She stayed in the office, frozen to the spot, until the kids burst through the front door. Liam, almost seventeen, threw his backpack on the floor. Four years younger, Jacob trailed behind. He knew two volumes: quiet and over the top.
“Mom,” he hollered. “The bus dropped us off wrong.”
“Chill out,” Liam said.
She held Jacob in her arms. Chill wasn’t an option, at least not for Jacob. He thrived on steady routine, but Liam was perpetually annoyed by his younger brother. She couldn’t recall a single day in the last year when the boys weren’t locking horns.
“There’s, like, police cars everywhere,” Liam said, stepping back to avoid them. “What’s going on?”
She shrugged. “I have no clue.”
The last thing she needed was Jacob wound up any further. She straightened the backpacks dumped in the foyer and locked the front door. Until she found out more, she’d keep the boys inside.
From her office window, Ria surveyed the street. A film crew returned to a van, pulled out a couple of black bags, and packed their things. Even now, four hours after she heard the gunshots at the mailbox, she couldn’t shake those images stuck in her head. She squeezed her eyes shut. For twenty-five years, all she wanted to do was build a new life. A calm, stable life. In the drawer of her desk, she found the Xanax and popped two pills under her tongue. She was safe. She’d be fine.
She let the sweat rise, cool, then dry on her forehead. Having lost a good part of the afternoon, she stretched out her fingers and got to work. With her mind racing, she couldn’t focus enough to do the detailed work the clients of her digital photography business, Pixel-by-Pixel, required, so instead she scanned a string of messages, updated her calendar and responded to emails.
“Mom?”
She looked up to find Jacob standing in the doorway, his hair combed flat, a white dress shirt tucked sharply into chinos. “Hi…..what’s up?”
“You told us we’d eat at six,” he said. “Aren’t you hungry?”
She glanced at the top right corner of her screen and bolted from the chair. She hadn’t eaten all day. In the kitchen, the chicken was browning, rice fluffed in a pot, the salad ready. Ria gave him a hug.
In the minute it took to set the table, footsteps thundered overhead, down the stairs and stopped behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Liam was dressed in black from head to toe, ready for a funeral. Bobbing his head to whatever blasted through his earbuds, he pulled out a carton of milk from the fridge and took a swig.
“What?” he said, registering the displeasure on her face.
She pressed her lips together. She wanted to say something but didn’t know what she should mention first. The outfit or his saliva on the milk carton? The snark? Let it be. This shooting was upsetting everyone.
“Get a glass and sit down, please,” she said.
“I’m going for pizza with my friends.”
“Not tonight, you’re not.” No one was going out anywhere. She arranged the chicken on a platter, grabbed a serving spoon and turned to face him. “Family dinner.”
“Right.” Liam shut the fridge. “Family. And where’s Dad?”
She stiffened. Met his eyes. She wondered, too. She swallowed her discomfort.
Across the kitchen, Jacob was pacing, her phone to his ear. Crimson blotches spread up his neck, across the tops of his cheeks and into his forehead.
“Dad’s eating at the station,” he told them. “Again.”
At the table, she picked at her plate while Jacob nattered, and Liam ate in stony silence. After the dishes were cleared and the kitchen tidy, she returned to her office and opened her laptop. Big red letters flashed across the screen. BREAKING NEWS: CATSKILL MAN SHOT DEAD.
She drew in a breath. No doubt, Jacob would have questions. How could anyone explain such senseless loss? She learned early life wasn’t fair. Some families stuck together, others did not. Hers would always be united. After everything she sacrificed, she’d make sure of it.
