Don't You Cry(84)

“Oh,” says Genevieve, smiling a cruel smile, “but I did.”

And that’s when the situation begins to quickly dissolve, any hope of being salvaged lost. Ingrid begins to whimper, crying out over and over again, “My baby! My baby!” while Genevieve screams at her wildly that she was once Ingrid’s baby. She was Ingrid’s baby, too. But then Ingrid abandoned her, and it’s as this betrayal is rehashed a second, third and fourth time that Genevieve loses her rationality and becomes more angry, more mad. I try hard to get her attention, to refocus on other things instead. The money in my hand, the fact that Genevieve has yet to harm either one of us, the fact that she could still run. It’s Hostage Negotiation 101: let Genevieve speak her peace, but also keep her calm. Don’t let her spew. Spewing can only lead to a loss of control, an impetus or a catalyst, the inciting factor that makes her lodge that knife into Ingrid or my midsection in a moment of passion and recklessness.

But Ingrid isn’t using good hostage negotiation tactics. She’s drawing from despair, from this sudden knowledge that Esther is dead. Ingrid screams aloud, “You killed my baby,” a poor choice of words that makes Genevieve reel.

I try desperately to abort a bad situation. “Tell me what I can do for you, Genevieve. Is there something you need? Something that will help you escape?” I ask, my voice louder than the other two, but still, losing composure as before me the scene falls to pieces. I tell Genevieve that I have a friend who is a pilot, a man who owns a small private jet, and how he might be able to help her flee. There’s a small, regional airport in Benton Harbor, just two or three miles from here. I’ll put in a call. I’ll ask my friend to meet us there.

Genevieve looks at me then and spits out, “You’re lying, Alex. You’re lying. You don’t have any friends,” and my breath catches, thinking a knife wound would have felt better than that.

You were my friend, I want to tell her. I thought you were my friend. But those words won’t help. I need to stay rational, and forget that in the mix of all of this, I, too, have been hurt. This isn’t about me. This is about Ingrid, Genevieve and Esther. It’s their story, not mine.

“Genevieve,” I say instead, trying to catch her attention like a game of Capture the Flag. For one split second out of the corner of my eye, I think I see a shape in the window, a pair of eyes looking in at me. Chalky-white skin, hair dyed a faux red, a menthol cigarette perched between a pair of thin, chapped lips, clouds of smoke seeping into the autumn air. Red.

But then it’s gone.

“Genevieve,” I say again, steering my words around Ingrid’s desperate keening, which is doing much more harm than good. “Genevieve. Listen to me, Genevieve. I’ll help you get out of here,” I tell her. “Where do you want to go? I’ll take you anyplace you want to go. I can get you there.” I say it once and then I say it again, quieter this time. “I can get you there.”

But nobody is listening anymore to what I have to say. We’ve all turned our attention to Genevieve. Genevieve, who regales us with the tale of the night she scaled an apartment building on Chicago’s north side and forced her way in through a bedroom window. The window was closed, but she got herself in, anyway, with the help of a slotted screwdriver and some elbow grease. She climbed through the window frame and into the bedroom and there, sound asleep in her bed, was her baby sister, Esther. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen her, of course. They’d met before, an attempt at reunification that failed miserably when Genevieve threatened to expose Ingrid. From that moment on, Esther didn’t want a thing to do with her. She wanted Genevieve to go away. But Genevieve didn’t want to go away. She wanted them to be a family.

“Esther,” Genevieve spews. “Esther,” she says again with an abhorrence on her tongue. “Esther refused. She wouldn’t do it, she said she couldn’t do it, to you,” she says, staring into Ingrid’s desperate eyes. “You’d get in trouble, she said, if people found out I wasn’t ever dead. What would people think if they knew? Esther asked me. Do you think I care what anybody thinks?” she asks.

“And so,” she says, hands up in the air as if admitting to something careless, negligent, a simple mistake, an easy oops—having forgotten a carton of milk at the grocery store or leaving a candle unattended for too long, “I killed her.” She draws that knife across her very own neck—close, but not close enough to lacerate the skin or leave a mark even. “Like this. This is what I did.”

And then for five long seconds the room goes quiet and still.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Bang.

Ingrid moves first, charging from the sofa like a linebacker and into Genevieve, though neither of them falls to the ground. Neither one falls, nor does the knife slip from Genevieve’s grip. I watch and wait and hope that it will happen, that it will happen soon, but it doesn’t. They grapple for the knife, two women locked in a gauche embrace, fighting for the weapon. And when it doesn’t happen, when the knife doesn’t fall, I know I need to move quickly, I need to act quickly, I need to do something. Save Ingrid! a voice screams in my ear. Save Ingrid! I’m keenly aware that Ingrid is on the verge of losing this fight. I can’t sit idly by and watch Ingrid die. Ingrid is a good person; she is. They struggle for a single second before I join the scuffle, three bodies united with a knife wedged somewhere in between.