From The Dots
Dot tried to pay attention as her aunt told her about her partying days with famous writers in New York, but it wasn’t easy. Dorothy kept sipping at that stinger, more and more of it disappearing down her throat. Nothing seemed to be happening. So that was a good thing. A very good thing.
But then, at one point, Dorothy leaned on her elbow and gave Dot a soapy smile. “I’m so happy you came out tonight, dear. Have I told you how much I missed you?”
And then Dot saw it. A slump of her aunt’s head, her chin slipping off her palm. “Oops,” Dorothy said, giggling. Dot took stock of the way her own body felt—she’d drunk half her stinger, but she was still lucid. Her hands weren’t shaking. Her vision wasn’t doubled.
Her heart cracked inside her chest. So there it was.
Like an old roof that could no longer withstand hurricane-force winds, Dorothy suddenly lost her composure. Her cheeks went from pale to flushed in seconds. Her eyes began to water. Her movements became florid and haphazard. When she smiled, she couldn’t quite control her lips. Dorothy stared at her palms as if she’d never seen them before.
Dot glanced around the restaurant, terrified that someone was on to what had happened, but all of the businessmen and doctors and first dates were caught up in their own worlds. She was grateful for Dorothy’s paranoid need for concealment. But Dot’s expression must have given something away, because when she looked across the table, Dorothy was staring at her in sober understanding.
“What did you do?” her aunt growled.
Dot licked her lips. The stinger had formed a thick coating at the back of her throat.
Dorothy stared at the drink in front of her. It was possible she saw two drinks instead of one, or maybe the drinks were spinning. Then she looked at Dot again. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“What did you do?” Dot asked quietly. “That drink was meant for me, not you.”
Dorothy’s eyes widened. “How dare you do this to me?”
“How dare you do it to me?”
“Did you know I have cancer?” Dorothy exploded. “Ovarian. I was going to tell you tonight. And now you’ve done it. You’ve probably ruined my chances of surviving.” She jumped up from the table. For a moment, she just stood there, peering around the restaurant, her eyes narrowed on a back hallway that led to the kitchen. Then, clutching her chest, she took off for the back door, the one they always came through.
Dot leapt up, too. She had no idea whether to believe the cancer story or not. But before she followed her aunt, she glanced at the remainder of Dorothy’s drink. She plucked it from the table, carried it to the bathroom, and poured the rest of it down the sink. She could feel the bathroom attendant’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look over. She didn’t look at anyone.
Then she went outside.
Dorothy was half in the shadows in the alleyway behind the restaurant, bent over at the waist and making retching noises. She wiped her eyes, stood, and glared at Dot. “What do you want?”
“Do you need me to get you a doctor? Do you need your stomach pumped? Before we call the police, that is. Because I am going to call the police.”
Dorothy blotted her mouth with her sleeve. Her nostrils flared. “You win. You win, Dot.”
“It isn’t about winning.”
“This wasn’t what you think. I was trying to help you.”
“How?”
Dorothy stuck her nose in the air. “Your drink wasn’t going to kill you—it was just going to knock you out long enough that I could get you out of this town without you protesting. I was going to get you a doctor. You were going to be fine.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“You should.”
“And where were we going to go?”
“Bolivia.”
Dot scoffed. “Why there?”
“Have you ever been? I spent some time there a few years ago. It’s so beautiful. And private.”
“I thought you were in Africa.”
Dorothy’s eyes were glassy. “We were going to have a wonderful life.”
“Why do you think I would want to have a wonderful life with you after what you’ve done?” The alley led to a busy avenue. Cars rushed past, their headlights bright, but she and Dorothy were in a pool of shadows. Dot doubted that a single driver saw them. “And who’s to say you wouldn’t keep doing this to me? Keep drugging me. Keep poisoning me. All to keep me in your control.”
Dorothy looked disappointed. “I’m sorry you see it that way, dear.”
“How else can I see it? You slap me so that I’ll cry and then you can hug me. You poison me so I can get sick and you can take care of me. It’s . . . it’s insane.”
“Clearly you’ve been listening to your mother. This is exactly the kind of thing she would say. I nursed you back to health, dear. It’s not my fault you can’t hold your liquor.”
“So why not take me to a fucking hospital? Why hide me in your room and bring in creepy Doctor Singh whenever I need an IV?”
“Doctor Singh is an old friend, and—”
“Stop talking!” Dot roared. “Just stop, okay? I know what’s going on. I’ve tried to put this puzzle together a million different ways, hoping that this isn’t the answer, but it’s what I keep coming up with every time.” She felt tears come to her eyes. “How long have you been hurting me? Did you come back just to hurt me some more? Did you hurt Thomas, too? Did you give him something to make him crazy? Were you the one who shot him?”
Dorothy stepped away from her, her footsteps clumsy and heavy. She had a pinched, cruel smile. “So many questions.”
Dot’s blood turned cold. Just like that, she knew she was right. “How could you shoot your own child?”
Dorothy rolled her eyes, then turned on her heel and ran across the alley. Her fur trailed behind her like a tail.
“Hey!” Dot cried, running after her.
Dorothy crossed the avenue. On the other side was a little bridge that overlooked the busy freeway below. Under the streetlight, her skin looked gray, and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Dot had never seen her aunt sweat before. Dorothy was also clutching her throat as though she was choking. Her eyes were bulging out, too. Dot was pretty sure she was doing it for show. She’d never felt that way all the times she’d been drugged.
“You were going to kill me, too?” Dot cried. “You gave me something to bring on those seizures. Something to make my condition worse. Something that would get you on the cover of Los Angeles as the saint who saved her niece’s life.”
“I can’t believe you’d say such a thing,” Dorothy sputtered. Her vocal cords sounded pinched. “I would never do that. If it looked like that, it was set up that way.”
“By whom?”
“The doctors. Those nurses. And your mother. Oh God, most definitely your mother. They all had it in for me. They had it in for me from the beginning.”
“No, they didn’t.”
Dorothy staggered to the overpass barrier. She curled her fingers over the ledge, peering into the traffic. “They hated me. All of them hated me. Wouldn’t let me in. No one would let me in. But I had one over on them. They were all so stupid.” Saliva spewed from her mouth. Her head lolled on her neck. Maybe this was the real, true Dorothy, Dot thought with a pang. Maybe the woman she’d seen and known had been an elaborate act. A look-alike.
“It’s why we’ve had to be incognito,” Dot persisted. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to be out with me. You could get arrested.”
“Yes, because of your moth-er.” Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Have I told you that she was a pill even as a child?” She broke off and clutched her throat, making a gagging sound. Her mouth opened wide. Dot watched as she tried to draw in a breath. The color began to drain from her face. Dot wasn’t sure how Dorothy could fake that.
“Dorothy?” Dot asked tentatively, taking a small step toward her. Now her aunt was gasping. Her eyes rolled back toward her skull. She staggered backward toward the overpass railing. Her legs started to crumple as though her bones had been removed. She grappled for her throat. She was just supposed to pass out, Dot thought. Like Dot always did. This poison wasn’t supposed to make her lose function. It wasn’t supposed to kill her.
Dorothy slumped against the guardrail and gagged. This time, bile came up—Dot could smell it. Her aunt spit a long string of stomach juices and saliva all the way down to the moving traffic. Horrible sounds emerged from her lips. She burped raucously, then gagged again, then threw up some more. Even in the dim light, Dot was pretty sure it was blood.
“Dorothy,” Dot whispered, trying to pull her up by her waist. Her aunt wouldn’t budge. Out of options, Dot reached into her pocket and found her phone to call 911. She didn’t look forward to the aftermath of this—her mother finding out again, the doctors testing Dorothy’s blood, a police investigation, a finger pointed at Dot, and then, of course, Dorothy herself going to jail. Maybe both of them going to jail. But she couldn’t let her aunt die out here.
Her fingers trembled as she pressed the buttons on her phone’s screen. Light illuminated against her face, and she pressed the 9. Then, the overhead light burned out. Dot looked up, staring at the streetlight, willing it to flicker back on.
“Dorothy?” she called nervously. She could barely see a few feet in front of her. She heard footsteps, someone breathing.
A hand shot forward and grabbed her wrist, knocking Dot’s phone away. Dot felt her hipbone smash against the guardrail. She could smell her aunt’s perfume and bile breath, so close. With surprising strength, Dorothy pushed Dot against the metal barrier and held her there.
“If I’m dying, then you are, too,” Dorothy growled. It didn’t even sound like her voice, and it barely looked like her face. Someone else had taken over her body. Someone possessed.
Dot felt her hips tip over the edge of the guardrail. Her head twisted, and she stared woozily at the traffic below. The cars swept by so obliviously. If they happened to look up, all they’d see was blackness.
Conjuring strength, she pushed hard against her aunt. Dorothy staggered backward with a grunt. Dot managed to tilt herself upright before Dorothy came raging back for her. She slid off the guardrail and ducked to the side, avoiding Dorothy’s charging form. What made her grab her aunt’s thin, shapely calves, she wasn’t sure. What made her hoist those calves up, tipping the top half of her aunt’s body at the guardrail, she couldn’t say. She didn’t intend to tilt her aunt so forcefully, and when she let go, she had no idea Dorothy was angled so far over the guardrail that most of her body dangled over the edge. As soon as her fingers freed themselves from those ankles, though, Dorothy’s whole body slipped away effortlessly. Dot whirled around and gasped, instantly understanding what she’d done. She lunged for her aunt’s tumbling feet, but it was too late. Her fingers grappled darkness and air.
Dot peered over the guardrail and screamed. It was so dark, and there was no sound of her aunt’s fall, but maybe that’s because the highway was too far down for her to hear. The cars kept rushing, their headlights betraying nothing. But Dorothy was definitely down there. Soon enough, someone was going to hit her. And soon enough, they would be looking upward, trying to figure out what had happened.
She turned and ran.