My Deal

“You’re not breathing,” my mother said. A voice coach who teaches Suits and Baby MBAs how to speak in public, she’s an expert on the way nerves shut down air intake.

            I couldn’t tell her that at that moment, seeing Claire’s eyes in hers as we stood at the bathroom mirror, I was being assaulted by the vision of my sister that disrupted my sleep; her face, not her face the last time I saw her, but with the bones broken, her scalp punctured from the inside by shards of her cracked skull, blood flushing away brain bits that escaped when her car hitting pavement forced steel and glass into her body. That thing about she didn’t suffer was a crate of bullshit. Even if she didn’t live past impact, there had to be four or five seconds when she saw it coming: the kid’s car, then sky where sky shouldn’t be.

            I squared my shoulders because you couldn’t grow up with a voice instructor mom and not know how to give your lungs room to expand.

            I grabbed the barber’s shears she’d bought online after her hair guy closed his shop due to the pandemic, needle-nose blades with a curved wing to rest a pinkie. Fear cranked my skin tight like the first time I stood under casino spotlights and the surveillance camera’s watchful eye ready to deal black jack: one finger slip and I could totally screw this up.

            “You don’t need to do this,” I said. “You look fine.”

            “I’m not showing up in court with this skunk stripe. I’m going to look my best.”

            “You think the judge will care?”

            “The cop said we need to appear sympathetic when we give our victim statements.”

            “Our?”

            “Don’t worry. Just your father and me.”

            Relief let me suck in a deep breath. I might be the son of a woman who stiffens the spines of public speakers, but faces staring at me, waiting to hear me talk terrified me. You might wonder how I stood at the blackjack table with a half circle of card players around me. Totally different. Blackjack dealers aren’t required to speak. Sure, some of my co-workers joked with customers. I got by with assorted smiles and shrugs that let the players at my table believe I was rooting for them while my job depended on me playing like the Terminator, emotionless and robotically-focused on a single goal: making sure the bulk of them got hosed.

            “Cut it down to the gray,” she said.

            “Show me how it’s done.” I offered her the shears.

            She angled the blades at her temple and resolutely closed her fist. A clump fell to the floor. She handed the scissors back. I lifted hair off her neck and made a tiny lop. Brown whiskers drifted down. I continued with quick cuts then I stopped. The grey was so short, in a couple places I’d exposed white scalp.

            “Let me take a look,” she said offering a makeup mirror.

            I angled it so she could see.

            “Oh, god.” She slumped forward, resting her hands on the sink.

            “Sorry, I’m no—”

             She righted herself and shook her head. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Perfect.”

            Perfect? It’d be a perfect Halloween fright wig: brown curls sprouting around slashes of grey and the occasional bald spot. That’s how easy she always goes on me. Well, not always. She started about ten years ago when she and my father split.

            It’d been an ugly divorce, at least for me, a thirteen-year-old gamer who just wanted to be left alone. As part of them working through their issues, I was expected to discuss my feelings not just with her, but also with my dad and occasionally a counselor when I’d “act out.” I didn’t feel bad about cutting algebra fourteen times a semester or flicking projectiles at my pal Jake’s head, even when that led to Ds and a couple detentions, because they had Claire. I hid in my big sister’s shadow. She protected me just by existing, which I mostly appreciated, except when I didn’t want to feel small and goofy.

            Claire powered through our parents’ break up in her usual style: excellent grades, a shit-ton of boring-beyond-belief activities like president of her class, yearbook editor, lacrosse goalie. Everyone, including my teachers, knew there was no way I could keep up, so no one, including my folks, expected much of me. I fully met their expectations.

            By the time Claire’s car flipped on a foggy hillside last fall, I’d become semi-responsible. I had a regular gig dealing cards at the casino they named for Boston Harbor even though the only blue water you could see from the floors with windows was the Mystic River. Of course, the stiffs didn’t care as long as chips kept sliding across the felt.

            Claire didn’t think I was giving myself enough of a workplace challenge, but she admitted I’d come a long way from the total screw-up I’d been in school. She was not the perfect sister. She’d go out with me for hikes, to hear bands, to dance, but she’d never let me drive. She said I was reckless and that trying to get revenge on a jerk on the road was a loser’s game. I was sensitive about that word, especially coming from her.

            Then, one night last November, my mom texted, “Come home NOW.” I figured she’d had one of her post-divorce household emergencies: mouse under the fridge, hornet buzzing in her bedroom closet, stuff she went all girlie on and made me take care of.

            As soon as I got in the front door, my mother pulled me close, her fingers splayed across my back, my face pressed into the thick plush of her sweater. “Claire,” she whispered. “Driving home from supper with friends. A kid speeding ran her off the road. She couldn’t save herself.”

            The shock liquified my bones. I would have fallen onto the rug, but her skinny arms kept me upright. We staggered to the sofa. I dropped onto it and scrubbed my face with my hands. Sick rose in my throat. I swallowed. Then swallowed again. My mother touched my shoulder. I pushed her away.

            The void of a Claireless world shook me hard. It caused me to do weird crap, like spending a December night alone in a sleeping bag by a rail trail that technically closed at dusk. Taunting drunks near closing time in a dive bar in Chelsea. Attempting nose wheelies on my Ducati. I’d tip forward gaining speed then lift my ass until the bike tilted onto its front tire. I could never hold it for ten feet, the measure of success. I flew toward earth like an RPG. My first fall cracked a rib, which I hid by pretending I’d stiffened up dealing cards. The next fall chipped two teeth. I couldn’t fake that, so my mother wormed the truth out of me. I would have kept it from her if I could because she had enough pain of her own. Her hip spasmed the day of Claire’s funeral. Through choking sobs, she told me she was on heavy-duty pain pills and a muscle-relaxer, a surprise, her being a clean food, homeopathic type. She still limped now, though she’d stopped talking about it, which I appreciated. My nightmares were rough enough without picturing my mother grasping a cane to get out of bed each morning.

            She peered into the mirror. “The cop warned us not to hint at anything less than perfect about Claire. ‘Not even a whisper,’ she said. I told her that’d be easy. There’s nothing like that to say.”

            ‘As far as you know’ leapt to my tongue. I kept my lips pressed and didn’t speak until it dissolved.

            “What do you think?” she said, meeting my eyes in the glass.

            It was what she’d asked for, but she looked like a monk in a grey beanie.

            “Nice,” I lied, wondering if Claire would have told the truth. Or maybe she’d have liked it. In college she shaved her hair on one side with bangs that fell over her eye on the other. When our father asked what it was about, she replied, “It’s a look.” I wasn’t sure our mother’s results qualified for that designation. Each day without Claire on the planet left me pondering questions I couldn’t text her to ask.

            I became obsessed with finding out how my super-reliable sister failed to keep her car from flying off that road. Because if she was even partly responsible, what did that say about me? Why hadn’t I done something when I was pretty sure Claire’s drinking had gone too far? Like the night she showed up at my place after an outing with her girlfriends too blitzed to drive home. She’d Ubered over and needed me to retrieve her car. As she plopped on the sofa, a contact lens fell out and, like the lucky duck she was, she put out her finger and set it right on the clear disk. After that trick, I let myself believe she was charmed. It was easier than confronting her. I should at least have insisted she replace the brakes on the Fiesta she was driving into the ground.

            I’d been telling myself her death had been inevitable. “There was nothing she could do,” the cop told my parents. I clung to that.

            I put off going to the crash site. Taking the Ducati out on winter ice would be too much even for me, knowing my mother believed I’d ditched it. I could have gone after the shutdown in spring, but I got furloughed. With no flow of people walking by my table, women in shorts and glittery tees, men in ball caps and team gear, eyeing me and the cards spread out in front of me, trying to figure out if I looked lucky, I went into a time warp. Days expanded as I sank into a stint of Call of Duty or binge watched half the Marvel Universe. Between that and Jake dropping by with weed, whole weeks vanished.

            Then it was summer and the court date loomed. I needed to see that place before I saw the kid.

            I could have borrowed my mother’s Sportage, but that crate wouldn’t give me what I craved: flattening an accelerator pedal under my boot, the rush of hurtling forward however fast I dared. My father had the car for that. I’d seen him more right after Claire died, then it tapered off to bi-weekly check-in texts and the occasional awkward dinner where he asked what it was like working at the casino. I tried to describe the thrill of playing cards with strangers, taking their money because I was forced to strictly play the percentages, no hunches, no waiting for a favorite chair to open up.

            His reply was classic Engineer Frank. “It sounds cruel, but I guess they’re asking for it.”

            I didn’t like thinking of it that way, like it was me, not the house, making the rules.

            When I called, he asked where I needed to go. I told him.

            “What do you think you’ll find?”

            “Convincing evidence,” I said. Scientific proof was up Frank’s alley.

            “The cops said it was a bad curve,” he said.

            “She was a good driver.”

            “The best.”

            There it was, the worship of his flawless daughter. But I’d given up accusing him of favoritism years ago. “I need to know what she was up against,” I said. “To see what she could see.”

“I’ll go with you.”

            I’d known there was a chance he’d want to come along and maybe I wanted him to. I’d never been his go-to child due to Claire’s ultra-competence and me being the kid who never had anything to show for going to school. To his credit, he’d made me feel okay about myself when I was little. He’d put me on his back, my arms around his neck, and we’d ramble through the woods behind the house, dodging branches until we reached the hill where we could watch river hawks soar and have a clear view upstream to the dam. The woods were off-limits unless he was with me, so I waited eagerly for the days he’d take me there.

            The trouble with Engineer Frank and fatherhood was he had no clue how to enjoy me once I was too tall to ride on his shoulders. He believed video games were soul-crushing wastes of time, electricity and, therefore, money. The more I got into it, the less I saw of him. Since I had no interest in cross-country skiing or building birdhouses, that pretty much worked for both of us.

            On the exit ramp, I took his M3 as fast as the suspension allowed, which left us slanting toward the horizon as it effortlessly gripped the road.

            “Christ,” my father said. “You want to get us killed, too?”

            “I drive how I drive.” I lifted my foot half an inch.

            With my father acting as a human speed governor, I refused to talk, so the whirl in my head kicked into high gear. How had I let myself believe nothing truly bad could happen to Claire? No gambler’s luck lasts forever. But I couldn’t see Claire like other people. She’d always ridden on a cushion of air, above the potholes and black ice that tripped up ordinary drivers like me.

            At the mile marker nearest the crash, my father called for me to stop as if we hadn’t both seen the police report. A cross that might have been two paint stirrers dipped in white acrylic had been nailed to a tree trunk. A bunch of red fake flowers were tied on with a yellow ribbon.

            “What the hell?” My father slammed the car door and stalked across the gravel to inspect the memorial. “You did this?” He looked up at me, one hand visored over his eyes against the sunlight.

            “No way. I’m not, you know.” What he should know was that I wasn’t a believer. Also not the kind of sentimental idiot who’d think this display could do anything for Claire. But we hadn’t spent much time together in the past ten years. I guess that was his excuse.

            “I can’t imagine that little killer did this.”

            “Killer, Dad?”

            “He murdered my daughter.” My father shot up as if the cross had ejected him from the ground. “I’m going to see that he pays.” He balled up his fist.

            As far as I knew, my father had never hit anyone. Once he brought me to a neighbor’s to apologize because Claire told him I’d shoved a kid onto the driveway. At their front door, with the mom staring at us, Frank commanded me to tell the kid I was sorry. “Okay,” I said, “But he pushed me first.” At that, Frank grabbed my ear and yanked me home. It hurt, but not as much as him not believing me.

            “Turn around,” I said now.

            He did. In the direction Claire was driving the road curved at a slope which would have left the kid going downhill around a bend as he approached. The shoulder was a gravel ditch. Nothing would block her view, no overhanging limbs, no mountain hiding a hairpin curve. The kid was going triple digits so it happened fast, but why couldn’t she swerve onto the gravel?

“See anything unusual?” I asked.

My father shook his head.

“Remember how shocked we were the kid blew a clean breathalyzer? Maybe Claire—”

“She was not over the limit.“ He grabbed my shoulders and flung me away as if I couldn’t go far enough. He knelt at the cross, scratching at the upright. Then he alternated yanking on the slats and scrabbling the bark with his fingernails. When I couldn’t watch any more, I clicked open the trunk and pulled the lever out of his tire-changing kit. At the tree, I squatted and nudged him aside. I pushed the metal into the bark and jimmied it, first methodically, then faster and faster until the cross dropped off.

            He grabbed it and hurled it across the road. It spun, soaring over treetops in a long arc until it crested and fell out of sight.

            “My girl deserves better than that crap.”

            Pitiful as that sounded, it felt like the one thing we could agree on. I tossed the lever into the trunk and banged it shut.

            On the way home, I blasted satellite radio and kept an eye on the speedometer. My father looked out the window as steadily as if he were a camera recording the terrain.

            “I’m not showing up with a cane,” my mother said when she asked me to help her at the hearing.

            “Not even for the sympathy vote?”

            She glared at me as if even after the haircut, I didn’t understand her feelings about how she looked. She was right, so I did what I could. I agreed to be her physical support human.

            In the car, she kept her eyes on the road. “There’s one thing I never told you.” She continued to stare over the steering wheel. “When they told us the kid wasn’t likely to get serious time, the cop said, ‘Aside from this, his record’s clean.’”

            My breath washed out of me as if my lungs had been punctured. “Aside from this.” Like Claire was an ant the kid stepped on without meaning to. “Why are we even going?”

            “Your father demanded we give our victim impact statements in person.”

            Engineer Frank probably didn’t believe his fury would Zoom at full strength.

            Miles later she told me Jake’s mom called and told her I needed to get the Ducati out of their garage so they could renovate. “She said she told Jake to tell you, but he hasn’t.”

            “Sorry I didn’t mention it.”

            “That’s not the issue.”

            I knew what she meant and it wouldn’t help to hear her say it.

            The two-story grey clapboard courthouse looked like the kind of place you’d go to see a strip mall dentist or chiropractor except for the giant portico over the door held up by white columns. A house of pain one way or the other.

            The parking lot lines were worn to suggestions. Weeds stood tall in the grassy patches on either side of the lot. The sky clouded over while we were riding north. It all look lifeless. Across the street, a car wash and a donut shop were the only reminders of civilization.

            Inside, the courtroom’s neon lights stripped the pale green walls and scuffed linoleum of shadows, making me feel there was no place to hide. Not that I needed to hide, but I’d have liked to get a look at the kid without him seeing me. My plan of operation, work-wise and otherwise, is not to give anything away. When I first got caught cutting class, I developed a half-lidded gaze too blank to be mistaken for anything as knowing as guilt. It’s served me well at blackjack. I lift the corner of my cards and no one knows what I’m seeing.

            I braced my hand against my mother’s as she lowered herself into her seat, a grimace of pain crimping her eyes. I sat beside her.

            My father came in and chose the seat across the aisle from me. The gap between us seemed fitting.

            “Nice hair, Barb,” he said.

            “You hate it,” my mother said.

            “It’s…interesting.”

            It hadn’t occurred to me until then that she’d cut it for this moment.

            “He hasn’t gotten rid of it,” she said, a tear spilling onto her cheek.

            Frank bolted up. “Even after this, he thinks he’s bullet-proof.”

            “I’m right here,” I said.

            Frank came close and stood in the row behind us, his hand on the back of my mother’s neck. I hadn’t seen him do that in forever. He rubbed gently. She leaned into his touch. I was whipped back to the days when, desperate for them to get back together, I’d have misread a moment like this.

            As Frank returned to his seat, a man in a lawyer suit came in chatting with a young woman in a skirt and blazer. Her giggle suggested a try for his approval, so only after she sat at the other table did I realize they were on opposing sides of the case. As they shuffled papers, I felt an urge to knock their heads together. Just another workday for them. At least the court officer and cop chatting by the door kept their game faces on.

            A woman who looked too young to have a driving-age son came in, her hand gripping the arm of a kid in regulation teen get-up: black tee shirt, jeans and high-tops. Below the purple-tinged hair, his eyes darted like he was searching for an unguarded exit.

            She walked the kid to the defense table, releasing his arm with a jerk as if she’d done her bit getting him there and the rest was someone else’s problem. Seated, the kid tilted his head as if he could avoid the whole business if he never looked up. I recognized his type: a dolt who’d never given a thought to what taking a curve at triple digits could lead to.

            My mother squeezed my hand. “He’s so young.”

            My father leaned into the aisle. “He’s a killer, Barb.”

            “Oh, Frank, please.”

            A woman came in carrying a thick file, which she set on the table by the judge’s bench. When the clerk asked us to rise, my mother put one hand on her hip. With the other, she closed her grip on my arm.

            The judge entered, oldish, pouf of white hair, large clear-rimmed glasses. I spaced out while they did stuff up front I couldn’t hear and tuned in as the judge began to question the defendant.

            When the kid spoke my mother winced. He had a nasal pitch she could have fixed in an hour in her studio. She’d worked with Claire at the dinner table, training her to talk lower in her register, telling her women who spoke in a deeper range got more respect.

            His words were sparse, Yes, Ma’am. No, Ma’am. I do. The last being that he understood the charges meant he could be sent to the Youth Services Center to live until his eighteenth birthday. 

            The prosecutor swiveled in her chair and signaled to us. Statement time.   

            The clerk asked who was going first. My father put out his hand palm up, deferring to my mother. She shook her head. He walked slowly to the witness chair like a magician playing the casino lounge who knew how to let anticipation build. Sitting beside the judge, he spoke too loud, his eyes fixed on the kid. “You stole my precious daughter, my prize, the pride of my life.”

            His fingers tightly gripped the sheet of paper shaking in his hand.

             “She had the patience and imagination to babysit little kids who wouldn’t stay still for any other teenager. She took her talent with children to college and she studied hard. First semester freshman year, Dean’s List. Second semester freshman year, Dean’s List.”

            As my father droned out Claire’s accomplishments, the defendant’s head hung lower and I almost wanted to let him in on Claire’s secrets. There’d be an ugly satisfaction in spilling it out. But the kid didn’t deserve to know. 

            The judge interrupted Frank to tell him she’d asked the prosecutor to inform each parent to be as brief as possible. She didn’t want the hearing to take longer than necessary “under current conditions.” She gave him two minutes.

            He talked faster. “She was honored three times as the best teacher in the district. Once she was named the best in the whole state. She wasn’t even thirty. She had a beautiful future. And you stole it.”

            On the way back to his seat, he glared at the boy. I helped my mother to the stand. The kid kept his head angled so the purple hair shielded his face.

            My mother clutched her phone, the screen displaying her notes. She cleared her throat, looked up and said, “Your Honor…,” I’d expected her to sound like she did when she emceed a program or taught online: clear, bold, projecting from deep within. Instead, she sat hunched, warped from her hip pain, not allowing breath to flow. “I’d like to….” Tears spilled onto the phone. She sobbed then shook off the water.

            “Take a minute,” the Judge said.

            “I’m sorry.”

            “No need to apologize,” the Judge said, her voice deep and gruff.

            My mother gulped, then gulped again. She held the phone out to me. “Please,” she whispered.

            “You can do it,” I said.

            She shook her head, pulled a wad of tissue from her sleeve and covered her nose and mouth. I took the phone, slick from tears. I glanced at the kid and saw what I detected in the unluckiest gamblers: the conviction they’re about to get what they deserve.

            I scanned the first line. I opened my mouth. Nothing. Seeing the kid’s eyes, all I could think was: you were there the moment my sister stopped breathing forever. With that, a jumble of images flew at me: Claire’s piercing eyes, her voice drilling speeches our mother taught, the funny walk she did to coax me out of a funk. In that instant I knew as I hadn’t before that she was gone. Not just from this place, this town, our house. From the rest of my life. I felt empty. Empty of air. I bent over to get a breath.

            “Are you okay?” the Judge asked.

            I was not. My mother squeezed my damp fingers. I gripped hers, inhaled, stood upright, and did what I could to release my shoulders. Speaking was the last thing I could ever do for Claire. I fought to slow my breathing, pooled spit on my tongue, swallowed it down my dry throat. I had to say something.

            “Can you begin, please,” the Judge said.

            Forced to focus, I became conscious of a sick whirl in my stomach. I looked out and saw my father staring at me. I could erode every win his perfect daughter racked up, every award he’d recited, his grip on his pride and all it would take would be telling the truth.

            “I guess I knew my sister Claire as well as anyone.”

My father’s nod looked like the grudging acceptance of a fact he couldn’t deny. I saw that I could tell my truth, but in his unwilling movement the depth of his pain became clear to me. He would suffer enough without me adding to it.

            I talked about a time when I was seven and I climbed a tree so high I froze and couldn’t even cry out.

            My mother drew in a sharp breath. Which reminded me. “Neither of my parents knew where I was. Claire guessed: the giant tree covered in poison ivy. She tried to coax me down, but I wouldn’t move. So she climbed up. Turns out she knew she was allergic. I wasn’t. She missed three weeks of seventh grade.”

            “Think she ever complained?” Deep breath, chin up. “You bet. But she never told our parents. Held it over my head for years. ‘I’m here for you, Little Brother,” she’d say. “But I’m not putting up with any bull—.”

            The judge cleared her throat.

            “Sorry.” I looked at her.

            She displayed a practiced poker face. 

            Turning back to the kid, I took a chance. “Look at your sister.” I felt a rush when he rotated in his chair. The woman I’d pegged as his sister held her hand up and gave a quarter-turn wave. “When you get in your car—every time you get in your car—think of her.”

            My mother’s tear-filled eyes sparkled in the harsh light. I helped her up. As we passed, the kid hid his face in the crook of his arm. At our row, my father stuck out his hand. I hesitated, trying to decide if he deserved it. Hell, what difference did it make? I offered my fist. He gave me a perplexed half-smile.

            Had I said too much, stuff that made Claire look less than perfect? Screw it. Maybe it’d make the judge see her as human.

            My mother gripped my arm as we walked to the door. “You’re the best,” she said.

            I knew that wasn’t true, but I was the best they had left.

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Ellen Davis Sullivan’s stories have appeared in journals including Big Muddy, Moment Magazine and Cherry Tree. Her essay “The Perfect Height for Kissing” won Columbia University’s Non-Fiction Prize and was published in Issue 53 of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. Her flash, “Taking Mary Oliver’s Advice” is online at Cotton Xenomorph. Ellen’s one-act plays have been produced across the country and published in Ponder Review and anthologies including The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2016.