I’M not sure why I did what I did next. In hindsight, it was definitely an idiotic move. But, at the time, I really didn’t think I was putting myself in harm’s way. I felt pretty confident that I was right, but I knew that after the tigress fiasco the Santa Monica Police Department wasn’t going to accompany me on any more detective expeditions. I certainly wasn’t going to ask Peter to come with me, as that would have meant bringing Ruby along, too. So I told my husband that I had to go out, making up an excuse about going to the drugstore to buy pads for when I came home from the hospital. He was only too glad to watch the baby, relieved that I hadn’t sent him off to buy feminine hygiene products.
I drove across town on the freeway and up the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Monica Canyon. I was going very fast, and it’s a miracle I wasn’t pulled over for speeding. Still, it felt like hours before I finally pulled up in front of Abigail Hathaway’s Tudor house. I rammed the car into park and, slamming the door behind me, ran up the path. I rang the bell and, too impatient to wait, pounded on the door.
After a moment or two, Audrey opened it. She looked the same as always, except she’d had half her hair shaved off again and the rest redyed a sapphire blue. She sported a new stud in her nose, a stone that matched her hair. She smiled nervously when she saw me. “Hi, Juliet! What’s going on? You look . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.
I looked at my reflection in the long, narrow window next to the front door. I was wearing my usual uniform of leggings and shirt, but a length of thigh was peeping out a torn seam. I hadn’t even noticed. My hair was dragged off my face with a rubber band, and I wore not the slightest trace of makeup.
“Are you okay?” Audrey asked me.
“We need to talk. Is your aunt home?”
“No, she just left for the grocery store. Talk about what?” She held the door halfway closed.
“Let me in, Audrey.” I pushed against the door.
She held it against my hand.
“What’s going on, Juliet? You looked freaked.”
“Let me in now.” I jerked the door open and pushed by her.
“Fine, come in. What’s up with you?” she asked. She sounded angry but also a little nervous.
“I know about GRrrrL, Audrey,” I said, standing in the hall.
“Who? What girl?”
“Don’t lie to me, Audrey. I know that you’re using your stepfather’s computer and that your screen name is GRrrrL.”
“It is not his computer. My mom bought it. It’s a family computer. I’m perfectly entitled to use it. And anyway, I’m not even using that computer. I’m using my mom’s laptop. One of the stupid teachers from her stupid school dropped it off a couple of days ago.”
She stalked off into the living room and shut the door after herself. I hustled in behind her and opened it to find her bent over her mother’s desk. She slammed shut a drawer as I walked in. Tossing her half-bald head, Audrey walked over to the couch and sat down. She held her chin high and crossed her legs primly. I could see the pulse beating in her throat.
“So you figured out my screen name. So what? What does that make you, some kind of genius? I, like, basically told you it was me.”
I sat down next to her. She still looked so vulnerable to me, so young despite her pathetic attempts at “cool.”
“Audrey, have you told the police about your screen name?” I asked her.
She looked at me incredulously. “No. Why should I? It’s none of their business.” She started picking at a cuticle on her right thumbnail. A bead of bright-red blood appeared. She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked on it, like a baby.
“Audrey, it is their business. You know that.” Was she really as obtuse as she was pretending to be? “Listen to me. You have to tell the police, because you can be sure Daniel will.”
“Oh, please, like they could care less about my screen name.”
“Audrey, the police confiscated Daniel’s computer, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, that’s why I had to wait like a week to get online. I couldn’t do anything until Maggie suddenly remembered that she’d borrowed my mom’s computer and brought it back to me. I’m surprised the bitch didn’t just keep it.”
I started to defend the nursery school teacher but then shook my head. I wasn’t going to let Audrey distract me. I got back to the point. “Doesn’t the fact that they took Daniel’s computer make you think that they might be interested in whatever information you might have about his E-mail accounts?”
Audrey rolled her eyes at me. “GRrrrL isn’t the one who tried to find someone to kill my mother. It was his faggot screen name ‘boytoy2000’ that did that.”
She shouldn’t have known about the ad Mooney had placed for the hired killer. I hadn’t told her, it hadn’t been in the papers, and there was no reason in the world for the police or the DA to give her that kind of information. There was only one way for her to know about the ad, only one possible reason for her to have that kind of information.
“And anyway, he didn’t even hire someone to kill her. He did it himself, driving her car,” she continued.
I sat there on the couch, next to Abigail Hathaway’s teenage daughter, and felt sickened that what I had feared was actually true. She wasn’t just GRrrrl; she was also the person who placed the ad on the bulletin board. And if she’d placed the ad, I could be sure that she was the person who killed Abigail.
I rested my hands on my belly and felt the little boy swimming in the warmth of my body. I wondered how it was possible to spend so much energy, love, and tenderness creating a creature who could one day hate you enough to kill you. I imagined Abigail Hathaway, stretched large with the shape of her daughter, dreaming a life for her just as I dreamed one for Isaac now and had for Ruby before him. Then I imagined Abigail’s face as she was murdered. Did she see Audrey driving the car? At the moment of her death, did Abigail know that it was the baby she had borne and nurtured and, surely, loved who was bearing down on the accelerator pedal?
“Juliet?” Audrey said.
I couldn’t answer.
“Juliet? Okay, fine, I’ll tell the cops. Okay? Juliet?” Audrey’s tone was now sweet and wheedling. I turned to her and felt strangely, absurdly unafraid of this violent child. I’d sat next to many violent criminals, people who’d done the same or even worse than Audrey, and never been afraid. My clients knew that they could trust me to have their interests at heart, and for that reason they never tried to hurt me. Never. So often I was the only one who saw the tough gang-banger put his head into his hands and cry for his mother. So often I was the shoulder the heroin-using bank robber leaned on while he confessed the horrors the white powder had wrought on his life. I was used to scared people who did scary things. I was used to them, and I wasn’t afraid. I reached for the girl’s hand.
“Honey, what happened? Tell me why you did it.” Tears filled my eyes as I stared into hers. There had to be some reason, some hideous story of abuse and betrayal that would make sense of Audrey’s horrifying deed.
The girl blanched and jerked her hand away from mine.
“What are you talking about?” She got up and walked quickly over to her mother’s desk, turning away from me.
“Audrey, please, you can tell me about it. You can trust me,” I begged to her back.
She spun around. “You think you know everything, don’t you?” she screamed, suddenly and harshly.
“No, no, I don’t. I know that something must have happened. You can tell me, Audrey. You can trust me. I care about you.”
“You think it’s so damn easy being Madame Perfect Mother’s screwed-up daughter?” She was crying now, dry, hacking sobs that made her voice crack and break. Words poured from her in a torrent. “You all think that she was so great, but she wasn’t. She was a nightmare! A nightmare! Nothing I ever did was good enough. Nothing! She loved every single one of those little brats in her school more than she ever loved me.” She wiped at her nose, angrily, drawing a smear of tears and snot across her cheek. “I hated her!”
Whatever she had done, this child was in terrible pain. Whatever had made her do it, she really was nothing more than a poor, scared child.
I walked over to her, slowly, and reached my arms out for her. She fell against me, awkwardly because of the protrusion of my stomach, and rested her head on my shoulder. Sobbing heavily, she continued, “I hated her. So much. And she hated me. She did. I swear she did. They both did. They just hated me so much.”
“Oh, honey.” I stroked her hair.
“She married Daniel like fifteen minutes after my daddy died. She couldn’t wait to marry him. And then they didn’t want me. They never wanted me. Daniel used to hit me, you know that? He’d smack me and she’d stand right there and let him.”
“It’s going to be all right. I’ll help you.”
She stood up straight and looked at me in surprise.
“You will?”
“Of course I will. I’ll call a really good lawyer right now. And I’ll go with you to the police. There are a bunch of defenses we can use. We’ll figure something out.” I wasn’t so sure that we could, but now wasn’t the time to bring up my doubts about the abused-child defense.
Audrey looked at me, horror-struck. “What are you talking about? I’m not going to the police.” She jerked away.
“You have to, Audrey. There’s no other way. They’ll figure it out somehow, and it’ll be worse for you if they come to you instead of you going to them.”
“I’m not going to the police!” She was screaming again, and her face had turned a deep, blotchy red.
“Honey, calm down. I know you’re scared, but I’ll be here. I promise I’ll help you.” I leaned over to her, reaching my arms out again.
Audrey looked at me, her face contorted with rage.
“No!” She screamed and ran around to the other side of the desk. Before I could follow, she wrenched open a drawer, the same one I had seen her close when I had first walked through the door. She reached in and took something out. For some reason, it took me a few seconds to realize what she was pointing at me. Maybe I couldn’t figure out what it was because I just couldn’t believe it. Her hand was shaking, and the little silver pistol jerked in her fist.
Before I even registered that she was holding a gun, I felt a thud in the side of my right thigh. I didn’t hurt at first, but the force spun me around, and my leg collapsed under me. I fell to the ground. I did my best to break my fall, but I landed on my stomach, hard. Suddenly the pain in my thigh was unbearable, hot and sharp. My entire leg felt leaden and useless. I rolled onto my left side and, crying, tried to sit up. I felt like my leg was on fire and that, at the same time, it belonged to someone else—I couldn’t make it move. I reached my hands down and covered what felt like the fiery center of the pain, and watched as blood seeped through my fingers. It looked thick and viscous, and I felt faint. I lay back down again, closing my eyes. I thought of Isaac and began to whimper. I reached my arms around my stomach, almost as if I were reassuring myself that he was still there.
“Juliet.” Audrey’s voice wasn’t angry anymore, it was small and quiet, or maybe that was because it sounded far away to me, like I was standing at one end of a long tunnel and she was at the other. I opened my eyes. She stood over me.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said. I saw that she was crying again.
“Okay,” I murmured, terrified that she was going to shoot again, but unable to get up or even move.
“It’s just your leg. It’s not such a big deal.”
“Okay.” That seemed to be all I could say.
“I’m going to go away. You wait ten minutes and then you can go.”
“Okay,” I said again, but she had already run from the room. I lay there, listening, as Audrey ran around the house for a few minutes. I heard her pound up the stairs and then down, a moment or two later. Finally, the front door slammed and an automobile engine started up.
I closed my eyes again, repeating her words to myself. “It’s just my leg. The baby is fine. It’s just my leg. Isaac is fine.” Then I felt a familiar tightening across my belly. The contraction seemed to go on forever. The combination of that familiar but nonetheless awful pain and the new and terrible one in my leg were too much for me to bear. I tried to breathe through the contraction like I’d been taught, but every time I felt myself climbing on top of it, the agony in my leg sent me crashing back down. I lay on the floor of Abigail Hathaway’s living room, crying with great, racking sobs. Finally, the contraction ebbed and stopped. I gave another small moan, this time of relief. My relief was short-lived, however, because the ache in my leg started to overwhelm me again. I realized that I might not have a lot of time before the next contraction came. I couldn’t stand much more of these competing agonies. Using every ounce of strength I could summon, and keeping before me the vision of baby Isaac desperately trying to get out of his wounded mother’s body, I bent my left leg and rolled over onto my left side. Keeping as much of my weight on my hands as I could, I slowly began pushing up off the floor. Every movement of my right leg brought another wave of pain crashing over me. I kept it as still as I could, and slowly, impossibly slowly, I dragged myself, using my hands and my left leg and pulling my useless limb behind me, over to the couch where my purse lay. I reached up for my purse, grabbed it, and collapsed onto the floor next to the sofa. I dug frantically for my cell phone. Then I dialed 911 and waited. Nothing happened. I began crying again, this time in frustration, and only a minute later realized that I’d forgotten to press “send.” I jammed my finger onto the button and, wonderfully, heard the sound of the ringing. I was on hold for a while, how long I don’t know, because I had a contraction during the wait. I surfaced from the haze of pain to hear a voice.
“What is your emergency? What is your emergency?”
“Help me. I’ve been shot and I’m in labor.”
“Are you having a baby, ma’am?”
“Yes, but I’m also shot. My leg. It’s bleeding.”
I felt another contraction coming impossibly quickly behind the last and had time only to tell the operator Abigail Hathaway’s address before I had to put my head down and fall into the pain.
The contractions seemed to be coming one right on top of another. After the next one, I held the phone in my shaking hand and dialed home. I began weeping with frustration when the answering machine picked up.
I have no idea what I said into the machine. I know I was hysterical with pain and fear, and I’m sure I absolutely terrified my husband. It was only after I’d hung up the phone that I realized that he would probably play the message in front of Ruby. I was crying too hard to call again. Hearing another hysterical message would only scare them more.
The wait for the ambulance was interminable. After a couple more contractions, during which I felt like I was drowning under waves of pain, I began dragging myself out of the living room and toward the front door. I turned once to look behind me at the beautiful Oriental runner in the hall and remembered how I’d been so afraid of ruining this same carpet that I’d cleaned up lasagna sauce with my shirt. Now I was leaving an indelible trail of blood.
I reached the front door just as the ambulance and police arrived. Reaching up to open it, I promptly collapsed into the arms of a man in a firefighter’s black rubber coat. He had warm, brown eyes and sandy hair and looked exactly like the kind of person who could protect you from fires, earthquakes, and even homicidal teenagers. Holding me in his arms, he carefully eased me down onto the floor in the hall.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. We’re here. It’s going to be all right.”
I smiled at him and closed my eyes in relief. I felt another contraction begin, and barely noticed the police officers who were stepping over me and pounding into the house.
When I surfaced from the contraction, I found myself lying on a stretcher, the leg of my tights torn off above my thigh, and my rescuer leaning over me, his hands pressing a bandage onto my wound. He smiled reassuringly, and I closed my eyes again.
“Ma’am. Ma’am,” a voice said urgently.
I opened my eyes to see a police officer bent over me.
“Do you know who shot you, ma’am?” he asked.
I just had time before the next contraction to tell the officer that Audrey Hathaway was responsible for my injury. I asked him to call Detective Carswell and tell him that Audrey had confessed to murdering Abigail Hathaway. Another contraction hit as I finished, and I don’t remember anything about his response.
The next thing I knew, I was rolling through a white hallway. I saw faces leaning over me and heard a woman’s voice asking me, over and over again,
“Mrs. Applebaum? Can you hear me? How far along are you, Mrs. Applebaum? Can you hear me?”
“Thirty-six weeks,” I said. “It’s too soon. The baby’s coming too soon.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Applebaum, you’ll be just fine. Can you remember your home phone number? What’s your home phone number, Mrs. Applebaum?”
I told her the number and then felt them hoist me onto a bed. I felt a sharp sting in my left arm and then, blessedly, nothing for a little while.
I awoke to hear the sound of voices.
“The bullet went clean through, and we’ve cleaned and sewed the wounds. The bleeding has stopped, and I don’t think there’s any collateral damage we need to worry about. The question is, do we allow labor to proceed, or do we do a crash C-section right now?”
“I’d like to get the baby out as soon as possible. The monitor is showing unfocused contractions two to four minutes apart. She’s only two centimeters dilated. It could be hours before this baby shows up, and I don’t like the idea of putting her through a long labor after the trauma of a GSW.”
“No, no reason to do that. Anyway, there’s evidence of a prior section, so we may as well go ahead with this one.”
“No!” I shouted.
The two doctors looked down at me in surprise. One was an older woman and another a boy of about twelve. At least that’s what it looked like.
“I’m having a vaginal birth,” I said. “Call my midwife, Dorothy Horne. I’m having a VBAC.”
They looked at me doubtfully. “Mrs. Applebaum, you’ve just been shot. Our primary concern is your health and that of your baby. You should not be going through labor right now.”
“Look, I’ve been doing goddamn prenatal Yoga for six months so that I’d be in shape for a vaginal birth. I’ve read every goddamn book on vaginal birth after cesarean ever written. I’m not having a goddamn C-section. Anyway, I’m fine. I feel fine.” And I did; I was in no pain.
“That’s the lidocaine. We’ve given you a painkiller.”
“It’s working. So I can do this. Call my husband, call my midwife, and get me to labor and delivery.” With that, I felt another contraction starting. The anesthetic had taken the edge off the pain, and this contraction was much more manageable. I breathed my way through it, making an ostentatious show of my Lamaze competence for the doctors who seemed so eager to cut me. They watched me, then looked at one another.
“Take her up to L&D. Let them decide,” the woman said, snapping shut the medical chart she held and walking away.
Within minutes I found myself in an elevator and on my way to the maternity ward. I guess my gunshot precluded them from putting me in one of those lovely bedroomlike delivery rooms. I found myself in a decidedly medical setting, strapped to the fetal monitor, and watched over by two nurses and a doctor. The doctor was a man, about my age, who was going prematurely bald. He looked like a nice guy, like the kind of guy you’d want to be your doctor.
“We’re going to prep you for a section, Mrs. Applebaum,” he said in a soft but firm voice.
“I want a VBAC.”
“I’m afraid a vaginal birth after cesarean isn’t a good idea, given your injury.”
“How long have I been here?”
He looked at my chart. “About two hours.”
“Is the baby okay?” I asked.
“It’s fine. The fetal monitor shows a nice, steady heartbeat.”
“Is my leg okay?”
“Yes, it’s fine. The bullet passed cleanly through, and both the entrance and exit wounds have been cleaned and stitched. You’re on IV antibiotics now in case of infection.”
“So if I’m fine, and the baby’s fine, how come I can’t at least wait until my husband and my midwife show up?”
The doctor looked down at me and finally smiled. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll put in an internal fetal monitor, and if the baby remains in good condition, we’ll give you another hour before we do the surgery. That should give your husband time to get here.” He patted me on the foot and turned to leave. At that moment, Peter rushed into the room. As soon as I saw him, I burst into hysterical tears.
Peter crossed the room in two huge steps, leaned over the bed, and scooped as much of me as he could reach into his arms. I couldn’t seem to stop crying as I nestled my head into his chest. Suddenly I felt a hot flash as he inadvertently brushed against my right leg.
“Ow! My leg!” I hollered.
“Oh, no,” he said, dropping me like a hot potato. “What hurts? What did I do? Oh, God, Juliet. What happened?” I could swear he was crying, too.
“It’s just my leg. My thigh. She shot me. Audrey shot me.” Then another contraction began and I couldn’t speak anymore.
I surfaced to hear Peter slowly murmuring my name. I felt his fingers in my hair, gently rubbing my scalp.
“It’s over,” I said.
“I know,” he whispered. “I can see it on the monitor.”
“How did you find me?” I asked. “Where am I? This isn’t Cedars Sinai.” I’d planned on delivering my baby at the plush hospital to the stars.
“You’re in Santa Monica Hospital,” a voice interrupted. I turned to see a nurse dressed in pink surgical scrubs standing on the other side of the bed, fiddling with the monitor. “The anesthetist will be here in a moment to put in your epidural.”
“I don’t want an epidural,” I said angrily. “I’m having natural childbirth.” Just then another contraction hit me. In the middle of it I turned to the nurse and said through gritted teeth, “Get that goddamn doctor in here right now. I want that goddamn epidural right now.”
She smiled and left the room. Within twenty minutes I had a tube the size of a single hair dripping blessed pain relief directly into my spine. It put me into the most wonderful, magical pain-free mood.
I turned to look at Peter and smiled.
“It’s working,” I said.
“Good.” He smiled back.
“So now tell me how you found me.”
Peter told me how he and Ruby had come home about an hour after I’d called. Ruby had gone straight to her room to find her Barbies, and, thankfully, had not heard my phone message. Peter had immediately called 911. The emergency operator directed him to the Santa Monica police dispatcher and from there to the fire department. Within fifteen minutes he had tracked me to Santa Monica Hospital.
“Where’s Ruby?” I asked, suddenly worried.
“At Stacy’s. That reminds me: Stacy and Lilly both left messages on the machine. Lilly said that there’s a space for Ruby at Beth El preschool. And Stacy said that a colleague of hers at the agency sits on the board of a nursery school called Robin’s Nest . . . or was it Bluebird’s Nest? . . . something’s nest. Anyway, a kid is moving to Europe or New York or somewhere and there’s a space for Ruby for next year.”
“Wow. Two schools. An embarrassment of riches,” I said.
“Should we go visit them?” Peter asked.
“You know what?” I said. “Let’s just toss a coin. I don’t think I have the energy for more than that.”
Peter smiled. “How ’bout we just send her to the Jewish school?”
“Really?” I asked. “That won’t make you uncomfortable?”
“Please. Of course not,” he said. “It’ll be nice. I’ll learn all about Hanukkah and . . . what’s that one where you eat in the hut?”
“Succot.”
“Yeah, all those holidays. It’ll be great. I’ll call the school tomorrow.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” I said. Meaning thanks for calling. Thanks for letting Ruby go to a Jewish school. Thanks for finding me at the hospital. Thanks for marrying me.
“Let’s call Stacy and let her know I’m okay. She’s probably totally freaking out.”
Peter picked up the phone. “What’s her number?” he asked me. I told him and lay back on the bed, idly watching the fetal monitor.
“I’m having another contraction,” I told him.
He put his hand over the receiver. “Can you feel it?”
“No. I can see it on the display.”
“Hi. It’s Peter,” he said into the phone. “She’s fine. Long story, but everything’s fine now.” He turned to me. “Do you have the energy to talk to Ruby?”
I grabbed the receiver out of his hand.
“Ruby? Rubes? Baby girl?”
“Hi, Mama.” She sounded so tiny and sweet.
“Hi, honey.”
“Are you in the hostible?”
“Yes. I’m in the hospital, having Isaac.”
“Can I come, too?”
“Not right now, sweetie. But you can come tomorrow. How ’bout that?”
“Okay. Bye-bye.”
“Wait! Ruby, wait!” But she was gone.
“She hung up on me,” I said, handing the receiver to Peter.
The door swung open and Dorothy walked into the room, dressed in scrubs.
“Hello, folks,” she said in her soft voice with its touch of East Texas twang.
“Hi.” I said. “I’ve been shot.”
She smiled at me and walked over to the fetal monitor. “So I hear.”
She picked up the strip and looked at it carefully.
“I’ve been talking to the doctor.”
“And?” Peter asked, obviously worried.
“And I think this birth’s not going to be exactly what you had in mind,” she said.
“No kidding,” I answered.
“You know, Juliet, Peter, they never go exactly as we plan. Every birth is a surprise to me. Some more than others.” She sat down next to me on the bed and took my good hand in hers. “I know how much you wanted a VBAC, but I’m afraid that’s not the best idea right now.”
“Why not?” I asked, close to tears. “I’m fine. I don’t feel anything. My leg is fine. The baby’s fine. Isn’t he?”
“You’ve lost some blood, Juliet. Not a lot, but enough to make you weaker. Isaac’s doing okay, but he’s not as strong as we would like. You know I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t think it was for the best, but I think it’s time to get Isaac out of you and into this world.”
Peter and I looked at each other.
“Your call, sweetie,” he said, and kissed me softly on the forehead.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do the surgery.”