Tully

Tully did not move from the couch. She turned towards the stairs, and then quickly away, almost losing control of her bladder, seeing two men carrying down a covered stretcher.

Minutes passed. Sound waves stopped breaking through her barriers. The men moved and the blue lights twirled and whirled like party lights for a party girl, for a dancing girl. The crowd of people gathered outside for the party show. A whole crowd at noon. Have they nowhere else to be?

There was movement, and there was vision, but there was no sound, no sound at all. I wonder if he is right, Tully thought. I wonder if I am in shock. I wonder if this is what she felt like withdrawing from us all at the age of two and three, withdrawing because the sounds we made stopped making connections inside her head. I wonder if this is what she felt like when she was a little girl and was trying to shut out the whole world.

‘Miss Makker,’ she heard dimly. ‘Miss Makker. Could you tell us what happened? I know it’s hard for you, but you must try. Please, Miss Makker.’

I’m not her keeper, she wanted to say. I am not her keeper. I could not keep her. Could not.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Have you called Mr Mandolini?’

‘We need to. Miss Makker, were you here when it happened?’

Yeah, sure, she thought. Why, I helped her. Me and her mom, together. We helped her and then watched.

‘Was it, perhaps,’ the police officer was saying, ‘an accident? That’s what we’re trying to find out. What to put in the police report. Could it have been, perhaps, an accident?’

Tully slowly shook her head and stood up. She felt a light-headedness not unlike what she felt when she ‘healed’ herself She sat back down. Ah. That was better. Still, though, I’m breathing shallow. She touched her skin. It wascold and clammy. ‘Look, I am in shock, right? I cannot help you very well right now. But you know,’ she said, her voice catching a little, ‘she was a good Catholic girl. Perhaps if you say it was an accident, she’ll be able to be buried by the Church. You know how the Church doesn’t approve of those…unaccidents. So perhaps maybe you could just do that, what do you think?’

Tully looked him straight in the face and saw his eyes fill with tears. ‘Miss,’ he said. ‘I’m a police officer. I have to do my job. I have to put in what really happened. I’m sorry, Miss.’

Tully’s eyes went hard. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘it was an accident. She was playing around, I didn’t even know they kept a gun in the house. It was an accident. She had everything going for her. We were going to go to California, you know. She was gonna be valedictorian of her class.’ Tully looked down at her hands and began to shake.

‘All right, Miss, all right,’ said the policeman, putting his hand on Tully. ‘All right.’

And they all left soon thereafter. Even the crowd disappeared. Well, why not? The show was over. They all had stood and stared as two stretchers were wheeled into the ambulances. The sirens back on, the police cars forged ahead, paving the way to Stormont-Vail Hospital. The only thing the crowd had the decency