Invisible Girl. Erica Orloff

Maggie snapped at Bobby, who leaned over her and was staring at her handiwork, occasionally offering advice.

      “How did you learn to do that?”

      “It’s like riding a bicycle.”

      “Sure it is. Only you would use that analogy.”

      Danny’s face now vaguely resembled Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Black thread wove crookedly through loose skin, but she had closed up the slice in his cheek, cleaned off the blood and sewn up the cut above his eye—it was deep and ran through the eyebrow. She bandaged his arm, hoping perhaps it wasn’t a break, but setting it as best she could. She had tried to jam the dislocated shoulder back into place the way she’d seen her uncle Con do once for her father.

      She applied a warm washcloth over and over again to Danny’s face, slowly easing off the caked blood. She cleaned along his hairline and wiped his hair. He looked better than when she’d first seen him. Swollen, turning an eggplant-purple, but with some of Danny’s “luck o’ the Irish and blessings of Buddha,” as their mother used to say, he’d still have a semi-beautiful face when it was all healed.

      Maggie mashed some Tylenol No. 3 into the applesauce and roused her brother enough to feed him three tablets. Then, with Bobby’s help, she got him onto the mattress they’d taken from her pull-out couch and had placed on the floor.

      “Now we watch him,” she whispered, getting up from her makeshift operating room.

      “Your hands are shaking.”

      “The first time I did this, I had half a bottle of scotch in me. Actually, the second and third time I did this, I had scotch in me.”

      “Drinking wouldn’t have made this night any easier.”

      “Easy for you to say.”

      “Look, Maggie, I just watched you stitch up a man on your living-room floor like you work in a fucking MASH unit. I’m part of this whether you like it or not.”

      She sat down on the love seat, and Bobby took the chair opposite her.

      “I’m sorry, Bobby.”

      “Don’t be sorry. How about telling me the truth? Let’s start with that.”

      “Truth depends on who you talk to. But I know I owe you as much.”

      Maggie looked down at her hands and tried to decide where to begin.

      Chapter Three

      “Courageous and crazy. It’s a volatile cocktail. That’s my father. That’s my brother. My father was drafted during Vietnam. He became a pilot. He tested so high, they’d never seen scores like that. He’s smart, with nerves of steel. Courageous and crazy, both of them.”

      “I know a few cops like that.”

      “He’s always been like that. My dad has two brothers. One was murdered after a stint in prison, and was supposedly as violent as they come. The other is the dean of Manchester University in Boston. He has two PhDs. They were like the twin sides of my father. Brilliance and violence. And secrets.”

      “Secrets?”

      She looked at Danny. “It’s as if there was a different life before the war. And then there’s this brick wall of Vietnam. He ended up volunteering for another tour. We know he met my mother there, and that he somehow got her out. Danny and I think he was recruited into the CIA.”

      “What do you mean you ‘think’? You never asked him?”

      “We don’t ask a lot of questions in our family. But even if we did, he wouldn’t talk to us. The CIA was involved in Laos after the war, during the war. My father flew planes for them—for someone. Someone with a lot of cash. You know, the CIA isn’t the only secret branch of the U. S. government. It could have been them, it could have been another shadow organization. It could have been Air America. All I know, which is nothing, just street knowledge from this neighborhood, is that he was pulling in a lot of untraceable cash from some government organization that wanted missions flown in Laos. And they were willing to pay a crazy-courageous man a lot of money to risk his life over and over and over again.”

      “He made it out alive.”

      “Yeah. But I’m not sure that he ever made it out,” she said softly, her eyes darting to Danny, almost involuntarily.

      “What do you mean?”

      “My whole life, my father has been a phantom. I don’t know whether he works for the good guys or the bad guys, or if he plays both sides, or whether he just works for himself. When my brother got to be, I don’t know, seventeen, eighteen, he started getting in deeper with my father. But I was always invisible, always on the outside of whatever it was that they did, whatever it is that they do.”

      Bobby leaned back in his chair and ran his hands over his face, giving a weary sigh. “So what happened to your brother tonight, Maggie?”

      “I don’t know. I don’t know who did this to him. I don’t even know if he started it or not.”

      “Have you ever told your brother not to come to you when he’s in trouble, not to drag you into whatever crazy shit he’s involved with? For all you know, it’s drugs or murder for hire. You don’t know anything, Maggie. You could be in danger. Whatever he and your father are into, they shouldn’t be putting you in the middle of it.”

      “I know, but they’re all I’ve got.”

      “You have me.”

      “I know,” her voice relaxed. “But growing up, this apartment was a place where only good things happened. It was like us against the evil spirits my mother was always talking about. This was a place just for the four of us, and I knew that my father would kill anyone who tried to mess with us, with our sanctuary. After my mother committed suicide, my father went crazy for a while. He never got over it. None of us did. But it only made us closer. I don’t know what my father does. Maybe because I don’t really want to know.”

      “That’s pretty severe denial.”

      “You’re not my shrink.”

      “No,” he said as he leaned forward and looked her in the eyes. “Do I really have to be to see that there’s something very seriously fucked up going on here? You stitched up your brother. And you don’t want to file a police report or take him to the hospital?”

      “You don’t know what happened, Bobby.”

      “Maggie, don’t play me. Even if Danny didn’t commit a crime tonight, the fact that you apparently have done this for him and your father more than once…that’s not normal.”

      She curled her legs underneath herself. “I’m tired, Bobby. Can we just talk about this after I’m sure he’s going to be okay?”

      “You’re putting this off again, Maggie. I’ve been with you for two years now, and I feel like I know next to nothing about you. I’ve never met your brother until now. I’ve never met your father. It’s like I’m living with a phantom of my own.”

      Maggie looked away. “I’ve lived a lifetime of secrets. It’s like lifting up a rock in the woods and watching all those creepy-crawlers scatter when the light hits them.”

      “Fine. You go get some sleep. I’ll watch your brother.”

      “No. You sleep. Please. I wouldn’t be able to anyway.”

      Bobby nodded. “I’ll be right in the next room. You call me if you need me. And look…we don’t know how much blood he’s lost or what’s up with that arm. If he doesn’t seem like he’s going to pull through all right in the next couple of hours, we’re taking him to the hospital.” He was silent for a minute. “I’ll try to pull some favors, see if we can’t keep it under the radar.”

      “Thanks.”