Marci woke Sunday morning thinking: "How did I do this to myself again?"
She could feel it hardening in the back of her head, that uncomfortable guilt and self-admonishment like she'd put off studying for a midterm until the date of the test or once again forgotten to check the oil in her car and knew that her father would back it out to move it from blocking his truck and see the light on and say "Didn't I tell you? That engine is going to seize up on you, young lady, and that's it. You're walking."
But this was worse. She was in too deep again with a man and shit, she was starting to tell it wasn't going to work. She was lying in bed, naked under just a sheet and watching the lines of sunlight streak through the blinds and crawl across the wall. It had to be eleven. He'd been gone since seven because he was working that daytime alpha shift or whatever they called it. She pressed a pillow tighter in between her legs and felt the bruise on the outside of her thigh. It was still that high, purple color of an underripe plum and was just getting a thin ring of yellow around its edge. He'd punched her a good one when she grabbed the cell phone out of his hand and kept right on bitching about him checking all her call-back log numbers.
OK, maybe she was overreacting. It was just his nature, wanting to know everything about her and who she was talking to all the time. It's what cops do, right? Born investigators and always need to know what's going on, he said. Christ knows she'd been with guys who didn't want to know a damn thing about her except whether she'd put out on the first half-drunken date. And so what if he called her at work a dozen times a night? He just wanted to hear her voice, he said. He was always asking if she could get out early because he missed her. Shit, when was the last time she had a boyfriend who showed her that much attention?
She rolled over to her nightstand and took a drink from the bottle of spring water. There was an empty tumbler next to it that he'd filled with Maker's Mark. The man could drink. Her daddy would be pissed off about that, pull that holier-than-thou on her even if he was the one who got her that first bartending job at the VFW in Eagleton. But the police officer part, he'd be proud of that. A law- abiding, respected man who would protect you when I'm gone. And he'd been gone, what, four years now?
She could still see him sometimes in her worst dreams at night, coming through the mudroom door, stumbling, and her father never stumbled. The frigid air from outside seemed to have ushered him in, the white vapor billowing off his overalls and jacket and coming with short, erratic puffs from the misshapen hole of a mouth. His big jaw was lopsided and hanging like a flour box tilted and about to fall off the edge of a counter.
"Daddy?" She could hear herself say the word and the brittle sound of it usually jerked her out of her sleep before she had to endure the sight of him falling, helplessly, against gravity and death to the linoleum floor. One eye was dropped and already sightless, but the other was clear and blue and wide like he was trying to record as much of his daughter's image as he could in the seconds he had left.
She had stood alone next to an uncle at her father's burial. The marble marker that held her mother's name, the one she had been taught to pray at from the time of her first memories, was replaced by a single headstone bearing both her parents' names. For some reason when she recalled that day, she remembered the clods of earth piled up on the grave, misshapen hunks yanked out of the frozen ground and too ice-hardened to smooth out. And she also remembered swearing to herself, "To hell with the rules. I'm leaving this place before it kills me."
Yes, Daddy would like the idea of her dating a cop. But he wouldn't like the rule breaking. And man could Kyle break the rules. That thing with the patrol car on the expressway. She thought she was going to pee! Then the drinking, while he was driving! "So what's to worry? They're not exactly going to pull me over."
And that time he was picking her up and before she could get to the curb those punks with the leather and nose-buttons started wolfing on her? She'd never seen anyone move so fast. She had ignored the two and went to open Kyle's passenger door and all she could figure later was that he had popped open his own side at the same time. When she sat down and her eyes cleared the roofline, he was gone, like a magic trick. A yelp from the sidewalk snapped her head around and there he was. One of the rivet boys was up against the wall of Nadine's Nail Design, hands up flat on the brick, legs spread and shaky. Kyle had the other one hooked by a fistful of black T-shirt and she heard the splat of that police billy club thing against the slick leather of his pant leg. When Kyle had them both against the wall she could tell he was talking but keeping his tone low, like he did sometimes with her when he got pissed and all she could hear was that low bass rumbling that came from his chest. She stayed in her seat, knew, even that early in their relationship, not to enter that bristling zone of electric air that surrounded him.
He was up close to the guys, in between them, his jaws working and both of them seemed like they didn't even want to turn their heads to look at him. She could tell what he was doing with the club that was now in front of him. She thought he was going to step down when the one on the left bobbed his head, saying something, and suddenly Kyle had a piece of the guy's ear, ring and all, in his grip, stretching it like the guy was some kinda Gumby toy and she could hear the dude whining: "OK, OK, man. OK."
Only then, after he made the guy cry, did he back away and come around and get back in the car as cool and unruffled as though he'd just checked on a locked door during some night patrol.
"Jesus, Kyle," she'd said as he started the car. "What was that about?"
"I don't let street turds like that insult my girl," he said, looking over at her, giving her that closed-mouth smile.
They had sex that afternoon at her apartment in a straight- backed kitchen chair and when he'd dropped his belt and the butt of that gun hit the floor she'd felt it thump in her heart and Christ, there was that guilt thing again. But she couldn't help herself for getting off on the excitement and twinge of danger that the guy carried around with him. What girl didn't like that page of fantasy that had her man standing up for her honor?
So why was she still lying in bed knowing, not just thinking, but knowing, that it wasn't going to work out and she was going to have to go through that whole high school-like breakup thing that never changed no matter how old you got. She watched the lines of sunlight hit the corner of her room like bars of paint and with each minute shear off at a new angle. Scared to tell him? Yeah, maybe. That whole thing with him disappearing out of Kim's when those other cops came in. The punch he'd bruised her with last night. Did he hit her high on the thigh because he knew it wouldn't show? That people wouldn't ask her what happened? They learn about that, cops did, didn't they? Sure, he'd snapped at her before, but he always apologized, always told her how sorry he was and how much he really, really cared about her. But what had once been flattering and endearing was starting to make her feel wary, like one of Daddy's stewing rabbits out in the pens in the barn. They'd get petted and fed and cooed at for being so cute and fluffy but every older kid knew what happened to stewing rabbits when it was time. Kyle was waiting for something. And there was no way she was going to wait and see what it was.