Five(29)

“And I’m gonna need this too, to make it like it’s real,” Rafi says, taking the pizza cutter from where Mrs. Worth laid it.

“Ready? I’m not going to hurt you, it’s just pretend,” Rafi says, resuming his position standing on a kitchen chair, leaning over Robi’s supine body.

“Doctor, it looks really bad,” Rafi says in a deep, serious voice as he squeezes ketchup on Robi’s abdomen.

“What are you doing! What are you doing!” Livvie screeches, and Horatio starts to yelp as she opens the back door of the house that leads into the kitchen. “Stop it! Stop it right now!” she screams.

Whether Robi sustained the cut prior to Livvie’s entrance or whether Rafi’s hand slips and cuts his brother after his mother startles him with her yelling is hard to say. And really, it’s beside the point.

Either way, “Ow, ow, ow!” is the sound that comes out of him, followed by terrified tears, because his vivid imagination is confused by what is ketchup and what is blood all over his torso.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” is what the stricken Rafi says, dropping the pizza slicer, believing for an awful moment that he has actually murdered his brother, because the ketchup smeared all over him is very convincing to his child’s brain.

“I only left for a minute,” is what a ghostly pale Mrs. Worth says when she runs into the kitchen and, stunned, surveys the scene.

“Why is Robi naked, why is he on the table like that? What did you do to him?” Livvie shrilly cries again, as her outfit gets smeared with ketchup when she lifts Robi from the table.

“He was playing dead, Mama. She says she cuts open dead kids,” Rafi hiccups through horrified sobs, holding his ketchup-covered hands out in front of him.

“He’s not naked. They had questions about physiology,” is all Mrs. Worth can think to say.

“You’re sick, you know that? Sick!” Livvie screams at Mrs. Worth. “You’re not normal! No normal person cuts open dead people. Dead kids? What are you telling them? Physiology? He’s four years old!” Livvie shouts, pulling both her sons away from Mrs. Worth, who stands frozen and foolish in her shower cap and gloves.

“I thought…” she starts to say but then decides against it. She takes off the mask and gloves and lays them on the table. She quickly scans Robi in Livvie’s arms. “He’s not badly hurt, it’s just a surface wound,” she says.

“Oh, so that makes it okay? He shouldn’t be hurt at all. And do you know how hard it is to get ketchup out of clothes!” she yells at Mrs. Worth’s back as she gathers her things and leaves.

“Dr. Gran, wait!” Rafi says, running after her, feeling guilty and confused about getting his grandmother in trouble, not quite sure why what they did is so wrong.

“You stay with your mum now,” she says, opening the front door. She doesn’t look back.

Livvie quickly sits Robi by the sink, and within seconds of rinsing him off, it’s clear that he just has a tiny nick from the pizza slicer.

Relieved but furious, Livvie sternly tells the boys, “You are so lucky, never play with that again, do you hear me? This could be so much worse.”

Unfortunately for Livvie, it is about to be.

Mrs. Worth gets into her car, puts on her seat belt, turns the key in the ignition. She checks her mirrors. Although she will never be able to trust her memory on this point, she does check them. However, after she backs up, after the bounce and muted thump of the wheel against the body, after the yelp, after Livvie shouting, “Who let Horatio out? Who let him out!” after both little boys stand on the front steps, crying, and after she sees their mother leaning over the small body in the rearview mirror, it is not surprising that she will always question herself about whether she saw the dog. About whether she drove over him on purpose. About whether she drove away without stopping because she was in shock, or ashamed, or afraid, or all three.

She will remember clearly Livvie’s high-pitched exclamation of “You’re sick!” She will remember knowing that it’s true. She’ll remember that she didn’t offer to look after her grandsons over the years because she was afraid she wouldn’t know what to do or would say the wrong thing. She knew nothing about children and dogs and the fun and loving and laughter of grandmothering. She’d never had a grandmother. She’d never had a mother. She was afraid of hurting them all somehow because she didn’t know enough about people, about family. And of course, hurt them is exactly what she did. She’s so much more comfortable with the dead, whom she can’t hurt at all.

She’ll remember thinking that Livvie is brave, defending her children like that, saying what she thinks is right in the face of something wrong, and she will wish that she could have been brave, long ago, when Gerald hurt little creatures and made her cut them open and made her feel strange and all wrong. But she did what she was told. She said nothing at all. And so let what they did follow her for the rest of her life.



* * *





When Nicholas gets home and learns what happened, he calls his mother.

“Are your sons all right?” she says.

“Not really, I mean they’ll be fine, but—”

“That’s all that matters. I have to go now,” she says, hanging up, burning with shame. And that is what she says every time he calls after that for several months. He cannot text her because she shuts off her personal mobile, keeping only the one she uses for the hospital. She will not open his emails. When he calls her house, she says only the same few words, because she can’t bear to ask about the dog, or Livvie. She can’t bear to know she has, in the end, become the monster she tried to suppress for so long.