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"I organized your deaths, my dear ones
all of you father mother brother when you died
you ask would i have done it for a husband or a child
my answer is no I would not
a husband or a child can be replaced
but who can grow me a new brother"
-Antigonick, Anne Carson
The first and last time Angelina saw Mark honest-to-God cry was right after their mother’s funeral. She’s thirteen and coming down from the hardest sob of her life, her salty tear tracks cooling on her cheeks from the cold Autumn air. The black dress she has on is the most uncomfortable thing she’s ever worn – the itchy, cheap velvet scratches her skin, the dress is about two sizes too small for her, and some of the back is safety pinned on her, but it was the only thing she could find in her closet that morning that was even halfway appropriate for a funeral. She’s sitting on the curb outside the funeral parlor with her knees drawn up to her chest when she feels one of her brother’s arms wrap around her shoulders, hugging her close to him.
“The mortician said it’s gonna take about another hour and then we’re free to go home with the ashes.”
Mark’s wearing the same suit he wore for his high school graduation almost two years ago – he couldn't button his shirt all the way up for his tie, so it laid on him crooked for the entire funeral. She doesn’t know how he even got the thing on this morning, but it’s a miracle nothing’s ripped. Mark ruffles her hair trying to comfort her and the familiar feeling of her brother fussing with her hair gets her to look up at him to throw him an indignant look. When she looks at him, she sees that Mark cleaned the blood off his nose when he’d gone inside the funeral parlor to ask about the cremation. She reaches a hand out to poke the now-purpling bruise where their uncle had decked him in the face and Mark winces.
“You shouldn’t have provoked Uncle Illias like that. You know how he gets and the last thing we need is someone else to burn us out of their will,” she mocks.
Mark’s father had split a long time ago and Angelina's had died from heart failure a few years back. Neither of them were really close to anyone outside their immediate family and a couple of cousins here and there, so there really isn’t anyone’s will to get burned out of, though, Mark opted to keep his mouth shut about the joke.
He pats his tender nose a couple of times. “Fucker couldn’t finish a fight if his life depended on it. I’ll be fine if I put some ice on it.” He looks at her, sees the splotchy, bright red cheeks with drying tear marks running down her face from how hard she’d cried earlier and something in him breaks.
“‘Sides, the last thing I wanna hear at my own mother’s funeral is that fuckup telling me how my life is gonna be from now on. Who the fuck does he think he is telling me to start looking for ways to get rid of you? Fuck him,” he mutters. Angelina tenses at his tone. She can’t tell for certain, but he sounds dangerously close to either crying or yelling. She can hear the waver in his voice as he chokes out that last sentence.
In Angelina’s eyes, her brother had always been this unshakeable pillar, one that gave her bear hugs just a bit shy of too-hard, who’d driven her back from a sleepover as a kid when she’d called the house crying because she was homesick and he pinkie swore her he wouldn’t tell their parents about it, and who had at one point hit her father in the face so hard he’d broken his nose, all because he’d yelled at her so loud it’d made her cry. For as long as she can remember, Angelina was the crybaby and Mark was the stone cold rock. But now, he’s shaking and holding her so close to his chest she can’t see his face, but she can feel the top of her head grow wet and warm in the spot his face is pressed against her scalp.
He whimpers out, “I’m not gonna let them fucking take you, Angie. I’ll die before I let them stick you somewhere that’ll make you miserable.” He hugs her even closer to him as she starts to cry again. He’s squeezing so hard her forehead has small button impressions when she takes her face away from where it's pressed into Mark’s shirt. There’s a growing snot-stain on his lapels that’s suspiciously Angelina-shaped, but Mark doesn’t seem to mind. He kisses the top of her head, “I promise you, I’ll take care of you. I won’t ever let anything happen to you. We’ll be okay, you and me.”
They go home, together.
Less than a year later, Mark drops out of school and enrolls in the police academy. They’ve had to move, get a cheaper place that Mark can afford, but it still isn’t enough. The bills pile up and Angelina has noticed more than a couple of new eviction warnings that Mark has failed to hide. He spends a not-insignificant amount of time at the kitchen table with his head in his hands staring down at the family checkbook like his gaze can make the numbers make sense somehow. When she brings up getting a part-time job to help out, the look on his face hurts her so bad she never brings up the idea again.
Not too long after that, they’re in the middle of dinner (an admittedly decent chunk of steak a classmate of Mark’s had given him in exchange for fixing his dorm’s broken bed frame that Mark fired up on their half-broken electric stovetop to a medium-rare chew paired with a tender bowl of honeyed veggies and mashed potatoes Angelina had helped mash) when he casually brings up that he’s found a better job while she’s in the middle of drowning her mashed potatoes in gravy. Before Angelina even has a chance to probe him for more details, he adds, “I’m gonna be a cop. Academy training starts next week, so I’ll be gone more than usual for the next six months. Don’t worry, I’ll take some time before that to teach you a couple recipes in case I get back late some nights and Mrs. Thanou down the hall said she can check in on you every once in a while those nights I'm gone.” He has the gall to stuff another carrot into his maw all while avoiding eye contact – he hasn’t looked directly at her once.
She stops massacring her potato purée for a moment in favor of staring daggers at her brother. “What about school? You’ve only got, like, a year before you graduate. ‘S no point in making your last couple semesters hell on Earth, why don’t you just wait a bit?”
He wipes his stupid face with his napkin. “I dropped out last week. I’m not planning on graduating.”
She chucks her fork at him. Unfortunately, the flat side of the fork hits his chest and bounces off it onto the floor. Mark’s face flashes red from anger. He clearly went into this expecting a fight, just maybe not that quickly.
“Jesus Christ Angie, what’s your fucking problem?! There’s training pay and the salary’s good enough to keep the lights on, so I don’t see what the big fucking deal is?!” He stands up and leans over the table so he can point a bulky finger that much closer to her face as he shouts.
Two can play at that game.
Angelina shoots up like her chair has burned her and raises her voice over his. “You really don’t get it, do you? You really thought that I’d sit here and give you a pat on the back for dropping out of college to be a cop of all things?!” She’s pointing at him just as hard now and says in a mocking voice, “‘Why of course Mark I think it’s awesome that you’re giving up on the only bit of school you’ve enjoyed and stuck with so you can demean yourself to handing out tickets at the mall to women over sixty just because our landlord is a bastard. Well no Mark. No, I’m not gonna stand here and pretend you being a dropout flunkie is good for us just so I can make you feel better about your shit decisions.” Their glasses have toppled over in their shouting match and one of them has shattered loudly on the floor. Angelina does her best to ignore the water drip, drip, dripping onto her bare feet.
“Last I fuckin’ checked, I don’t need your permission to do what’s best for us! I fucking know what’s best for us!” He slams his fist on the table so hard the plates jump in the air. Angelina sprints over to Mark and balls her fists in his t-shirt so hard she can hear small ripping noises.
“And when you get shot or killed in some horrific way, how is that what’s best for us, huh? I won’t let you do that to me – I’m not gonna let you go out there and get killed by some wackjob and leave me to deal with the rest of your bullshit. I’m just not gonna let you do that.” Her face crumples during the last sentence and she drops to the floor in a heap and sobs so hard she starts to hyperventilate, punctuating the end of the screaming match. She hates that she can’t ever just be mad at him, she always has to cry as well. It drives her insane. The air around Mark changes completely when she collapses, all the fight in him gone in an instant.
God, leave it to baby sister to start crying the moment her feelings get hurt to win the fight, right? she thinks to herself when her brain gets a chance to catch up. Mark slowly crouches down to the ground, his knees creaking and popping like he’d put his joints in the microwave and hit the ‘Popcorn’ button, and kicks the dirty, gravy-covered silverware out of the way under the table somewhere, heaving a grunt as he settles down on the wet floor.
“Angie, I’m sorry for yelling. Is it okay if I touch you?”
She shakes her head. She refuses to meet his face, her head squished between her knees like he’d taught her to do back when her father’s shouting still scared her and he'd found her in the closet trying hide her panic.
He sighs and asks, “Can I sit next to you?”
He takes her non-response as permission to scoot over to her, their legs barely touching.
In the quietest voice he can muster, so quiet Angelina’s convinced he’d hoped her ragged breathing had drowned it out, Mark says, “God, I don’t know what to do, Angie. Every time I take a look around, all I see is where I’ve failed you.” Even though she can’t see his face, Angelina knows he’s looking down at her pityingly. “I forced you to stay with me after Mom and I didn’t even fucking ask if you even wanted that. I just knew that if I lost you, that’d be the end of me. I just know it.”
Angelina grabs the sleeve of his t-shirt and brings her eyes up to meet his, her head resting on her forearm. He sighs and pulls a piece of broccoli out of her hair. “You’d be fine without me if it ever came down to it. I mean, I can’t buy you the things you need, I can’t keep a roof over your head, fuck, I can’t even make time for you. But at least with this job and leaving school, I can do some of those things for you.” He looks down at her, pleading, “Please let me do this for you. For us.”
Angelina grabs a bundle of the bottom of Mark’s t-shirt and pulls it to her face to blow her nose in it. Mark makes a small noise of protest, but otherwise does nothing about using him as a hankie. She whimpers out, “You’re wrong Mark. Of course I need you. I can't stand the thought of you being a cop, but I'll suck it up if you promise me you’ll come back home every night, safe and sound.”
“Angie, you know I–”
“You have to promise me or I swear I’ll… I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” Mark asks in a mocking tone.
“I don’t know, but I’ll do something awful. It’ll be worse than that time you got the shit kicked out of you and the Dovas kid broke your ankle during a soccer match.” Her brother chuckles at the memory and rubs at his right ankle where the old wound was, a faint scar marking the memory. “Damn, low blow kid.”
She looks up at him; he still has a bit of gravy in his hair. “Promise me?”
He hesitates before answering, “...Y’know what, sure. Can’t believe I’m resigning myself to a lifetime of hazing when I hightail it at the first sign of a purse snatcher, but hey, a promise is a promise.” He pokes her sides where she’s extra ticklish to get her laughing. “At least I got an excuse to be a coward now.” Mark clears his throat and sucks in a breath. Angelina groans, “Oh my God Mark, please don’t start doing voices." He flashes her a knowing grin before hamming it up, “Sorry Mr. Police Chief, my little sister says she can’t cook mac n’ cheese for shit so I gotta make sure I don’t bite the dust so she can get a hot meal tonight. ‘Private Hoffman, eat my ass you’re off the case.’ Sir, yes sir! I’ll take that government pension now.”
Angelina is holding her sides from how hard she's giggling. “Why is he calling you Private Hoffman? Are you some kind of army cop or something?”
Her brother stands and extends an arm down to her to help her up on her feet. “Fuck if I know, I haven’t started the job yet. Now help me clean dinner off the walls.”
Despite his performance earlier, Mark spends that night tossing and turning while thinking of all the impossible ways to stay safe in a city as repugnant as theirs. He’s finding it hard to imagine returning to Angelina every night without at least a healthy amount of self-preservation that will no doubt get him in deep trouble. Or worse.
Two months into being a freshly minted beat cop, Mark comes home drunk. Angelina’s geometry homework is being patently ignored in favor of scouring the kitchen to find the stash of snacks she knows Mark has been holding out on her when the front door slams open so hard, she hears the door handle break through the drywall.
A few weeks prior, their apartment had been broken into while Mark was at work and Angelina was at school. Whoever it was had stolen some of the cash her brother kept in the back of his sock drawer, a half-full piggy bank on Angelina's vanity, all her Lord of the Rings books, some of their mom’s jewelry they hadn’t pawned yet, and for some strange reason their well-loved game of Monopoly that was missing half the pieces. She'd learned about the break-in when she’d walked into their home that day and saw Mark talking to another cop writing in a notebook in their trashed living room. When the other officer had left, Mark tried reassuring her it was “probably just some neighborhood punk looking for an easy target” and not to worry about it too much. Though, it was kinda hard not to worry when he’d followed that up with, “But there’s a fat chance the police are gonna get any of our stuff back or find the guy who broke in.” The sight of her brother changing the locks that night had freaked her out so bad, she’d asked Mark to sleep in the living room as a lookout for almost an entire week. It was only when she kept hearing his back crack at breakfast that she lied and said she was over it.
But back to the door punching a hole in the wall. It’s been over three hours since Mark was supposed to be home and the loud bang makes her jump off the chair she’d been standing on in front of the fridge looking for goodies. Thinking it's another break-in, she dashes to the landline hanging on the wall under the note Mark wrote that week’s work schedule on to call his station when she hears a familiar voice muttering curses. Confused, Angelina drops the phone and peeks out the kitchen window to the entryway. The door handle is firmly embedded in the wall and Mark is lying flat on his back on the floor with a hand over his mouth. She darts over to her brother and tugs on his arms to try and pull him to his feet. He sputters and coughs a couple of times and rolls over to sit upright. When he moves, Angelina gets a disgusting whiff of booze that’s so pungent it makes her gag.
“What the hell, are you drunk?”
“No,” he lies. He can barely even get that one word out coherently.
She brings one of his arms around her shoulders and guides him to their couch. He’s lost a little bit of weight recently from training and skipping meals, but he’s still hard to carry. Luckily, he’s not so far gone he can’t help Angelina walk himself to the living room by shifting most of his weight off Angelina’s shoulders. He flops onto the couch with a soft “oof” and a groan. When she confirms Mark won’t choke on his own tongue, she leaves him there to go grab a glass of water and a couple of aspirin. When she returns, her brother is standing near the small bar cart next to the TV uncorking the bottle of malt scotch whiskey lying there. His back is turned from her, but she can feel something’s wrong when he then just stares at the open bottle in his hand.
“What happened?” The only indication he heard what she said is a small twitch in his shoulders. He’s still not looking at her.
She continues, “Mark, what happened? You didn’t call to say you were gonna be late. You’re supposed to call.”
He takes a hard swig straight out the bottle and slams it back onto the cart, reaching for a glass. “I don’t wanna fuckin’ talk about it, Angie.” He pours himself two fingers of whiskey into his glass for good measure and finally turns to face her. His eyes are half-closed and there's a small dribble of whiskey hanging on the corner of his lips. “I really, really don’t wanna talk right now, so please just go to your room and leave me alone for tonight, okay?”
It’s insane how Mark knows exactly how to push people’s buttons, even when he’s not trying to. The infuriating fact that he’s barely holding on to consciousness yet makes sure to keep this strange, even politeness while hammered would make Angelina’s blood boil normally, but tonight she doesn't want a fight. She just wants her stupid brother back. She grabs all her homework that had fallen off the table and locks herself in her room. The entire night before she falls asleep, she doesn’t hear a peep from Mark in the living room. The apartment is dead silent that night: no stirring, no mumbling, just the soft chink chink chink as the whiskey glass is no doubt raised and placed back on the table after each swig.
The next morning, Mark apologizes to her by making waffles and fresh orange juice (he can’t just say sorry and move on, no, that’d be too easy) for when she wakes up. He’s made a pot of coffee for himself in the machine that has a big crack on the glass and is eating one of the waffles he made completely dry, just shoving it into his mouth syrup-less like an animal. The spot where the front door had breached the wall has still-drying Spackle and paint, an attempt at patching up.
Not sure what kind of tension is still lingering in the air, Angelina sits at the table silently and puts a few waffles on her plate. In the middle of reaching for the butter, Mark speaks up:
“So last night. We were riding around in the cruiser yesterday.”
The offer of an explanation for his behavior yesterday doesn’t settle the lump that’s formed in Angelina’s stomach.
“On patrol in some neighborhood somewhere, I don’t know. I think I told you they assigned me a temporary partner to show me the ropes, right? Well, he wanted to grab lunch, so we pull out of this white-picket fence-ass neighborhood a ways from the station to get on the highway when we get a call. Dispatch says there’s a domestic dispute down the road. I try to pick up the receiver to let them know we’re headed that way when my partner grabs the radio instead. He says ‘10-4 Dispatch, we’ll let you know when it’s been settled’ and keeps driving. He’s not turning around. I ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing and the bastard says ‘Grabbing lunch Hoffman, what else?’ and just keeps fucking driving.” Mark pauses a moment to pour himself another cup of coffee, adding a spoon of sugar and nothing else before continuing. “I tell him, I say ‘Asshole, we’re a block down the road from that call. Turn the cruiser around’ and this guy looks me dead in the eye and says ‘I know the house they’re talkin’ about. We get calls there all the time and it’s never anything more serious than a couple a’ love taps. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather grab a slice than deal with that shit.’”
Angelina’s waffles are now sitting dead and cold on her plate, waiting to be put out of their misery, but she cannot force herself to take a bite. The lump is stuck in her throat now.
“I go to the Chief afterwards and tell him what my partner did. Man looked at me like I was gum under his shoe and said ‘Next time you wanna talk, Hoffman, bring me something worth talking about’ and slams the door in my face. Then my partner told me he better not see my ugly mug at work today – said I needed a day to brush up on my ‘rat excuses.’ So now I’m in hot fuckin’ water with the Chief, my partner, and probably every other blue-blood idiot at the station and I’ve got fuckin’ nothing to show for it.”
He’s kept an eerily even tone the entire time. Mark picks up another cold waffle and stuffs it into his mouth, breathing angrily out his nose while he chews. He slaps his hands together to get rid of the remaining crumbs and tells her, “Go and get ready for school. I’ll drop you off today.” He dumps the rest of his coffee into the sink and starts cleaning up the kitchen table. Angelina drags her feet to her room and softly closes the door behind her, feeling like if she makes any noise, she’ll disturb some delicate balance in the universe and either her or Mark will crumble and lose it.
She doesn’t say anything to Mark on the way to school, still trying to walk that thin line between acknowledgement and provocation. He gives her a quick arm hug before reaching over to open the car door for her and then drives off. Angelina spends the entire day at school thinking of what to say to Mark to make things better when she gets home. She doesn't know what to say to someone in a situation like that.
Turns out, she stressed over nothing because she comes home to a dark apartment and a note on the counter that says
gone to uncle illias’s place.
there’s lasagna in the fridge.
be back by midnight but i’ll call if anything comes up.
Angelina grabs the bottle of Mark’s opened malt scotch whiskey off the cart and drops it right into the garbage can. She pulls the lasagna out from the fridge and squats on the living room floor with her sketchpad and plate, eating a cold dinner she can barely taste and sketching until she can’t feel her fingers anymore.
If you’d told Angelina a few years ago that getting taken to the police station to give a statement wasn’t really scary insomuch as drop dead boring, well, frankly she wouldn’t have believed you. The ever-nebulous concept that is The Station had always just been a place Mark came home from, never really a place for her to visit or see. Honestly, the way Mark described the place the few times she’d asked should have been a dead giveaway for what she found there: a glorified office complete with rolling chairs and a water cooler. Because she’d never actually been to see Mark while on-duty outside of the odd time he came home for lunch in uniform, Angelina’s only real point of reference for a police station were the odd Cops episodes she caught on TV every so often where they threatened suspects with the ‘Why don’t we take this Downtown?’ line, evoking in her a sense that Downtown was Bad News. In reality, all the danger Downtown can muster up is really just a dull headache from flickering fluorescent lights; the smell of burnt coffee mixed with the undeniable scent of urine assaulting her nose; being offered stale, dry croissants as your only food source; and a sore ass from being forced to sit in an uncomfortable, wooden chair for four hours while six different people ask the same twenty questions in different ways. By the time the last cop who needed to take Angelina’s statement leaves with a half-full notepad, the frozen pack of veggies she has pressed to her swollen face that some intern had found her has melted and is dripping water all over her torn tights. The black eye forming on her face is dulling to a mild heartbeat-like throb. Another thirty minutes after being questioned, Angelina’s picking off the remaining green nail polish on her thumb when she finally sees Mark step out from an office. His knuckles are bandaged up, he has the beginnings of stubble coming in, and the bags under his eyes are almost blue from how sunken they are. He looks tired.
Beating someone up so bad Angelina had needed to call 911 must've really taken it out of Mark, even if it was just the scrawny guy who had punched her so hard she’d lost feeling in her legs for a moment.
He walks over to where she's seated. “Hey,” he says sleepily.
“Hey.” She tosses the limp bag of peas onto the desk. She doesn’t know whose desk it is, but it’s soaking wet now. Mark rolls over a chair from another nearby desk to come take a seat next to her. Angelina is rubbing her fingers under the holes in her tights to make them bigger. She looks up at Mark’s eyes.
“They manage to break you yet?” she teases.
“Very funny. Angie, I’m not in the mood.”
“What, not gonna get your raise this year, Rambo?”
“If I’d actually gone Rambo on that piece of shit, he wouldn’t be in the hospital, he’d be six feet under choking on dirt.” If it’s supposed to be a joke, neither of them laugh at it. Mark leans back as far as the creaking office chair will let him and rubs his eyes hard enough that Angelina fears he might hurt himself. He wipes his hands down his face and gives his sister a weighty expression. Even without the ability to peel his skull back and look directly into his brain, Angelina can tell he’s staring at the dark purple marks under her right eye. She can’t quite place the emotion on his face, but his eyes have a shine and dampness to them that aren’t quite tears yet, but approaching dangerously close to them. He looks solemn but glad his baby sister got away tonight with a couple of shiners that’ll fade instead of any permanent physical damage. More than anything, though, he seems exhausted.
“You look like shit kid,” he huffs.
“You’re a real jackass sometimes, y’know?” It’s crude, but gets a smile out of them both. When Angie smiles, she slightly winces from the pain in her cheek. Mark shuffles to the station’s kitchenette and grabs a new bag from the tiny freezer. This time Angelina has the pleasure of desecrating some poor sap’s frozen corn. He’s also brought back with him a couple of donuts that are only barely starting to harden and an opened, flat can of diet coke. A peace offering. She’s relieved that Mark stopped her (now ex) boyfriend despite his methods, but he’s not getting off the hook that easy.
She sighs and grabs one of the donuts her brother scavenged. “Mark, you really shouldn’t have done that. At least, not how you did it. Now everyone at school is gonna make me out to be some kind of psycho. ‘Watch out for Angie! She’s got a crazy cop brother! Look at her wrong and she’ll sick her guard dog on you.’ God, do you even realize what a nightmare chemistry is gonna be on Monday? Mr. Lussi already hates me and now he’s literally gonna be insuffera–”
“You think I care what some washed up high school teacher thinks of me? Or any of those other punks who go to your school? You didn’t know what you were getting into with that piece of shit. He was bad for you, end of story. He had to go and I took care of it. Just because I took it upon myself to get rid of that scum for you, suddenly I’m the bad buy because I did it in a way you didn’t like? Honestly, a thank you seems more appropriate than whatever the fuck this is.” He gestures at her with a vague wave of his hands. But he’s not finished.
“Maybe if you actually fuckin’ cared about yourself a little more, you’d’ve seen that piece of shit coming a mile away. Kept us both outta trouble.”
Her jaw drops. Fresh, angry tears threaten to make her tear ducts home again. “Yeah, real fucking mature Mark. You just go ahead and blame what happened today on me! I know you’ve been becoming more and more of an asshole recently, but I’ve gotten real tired of it. You are not my fucking dad,” she spits out.
“Jesus Angie, if you’re gonna act out like this can you at least give me the decency of not being so fucking cliché about it?” They’re not quite yelling yet (they are still in Mark’s station even if he is off-duty), but Angie can tell Mark wants to scream. His bright eyes have locked onto hers with the most scathing look she’s ever seen him throw at her, like he’s willing her to cry.
Angelina had only ever seen pictures of Mark’s birth father, but it was uncanny how much he resembled the man sometimes. Everything down to his cool-steel eyes, his fuller, pale lips, and permanent scowl looked like the man in the photos. He didn’t really take after their mother much. The woman had been such an ugly crier; she could never raise her voice at them without the waterworks soon following. Angelina definitely took after her in that way. But when Mark got angry, he sneered. The side of his mouth would upturn into his nose, flaring his nostrils. It made him look like an animal bushed up and ready for a fight. Mark has never scared her, not really, but Angelina would be lying if she said she never found Mark scary. Sometimes when he’s really upset his eyes get so much brighter, colder somehow; the blue sheen of his eyes disappears, deepening into these cavernous holes that bore all the way down into you until all you want to do is look away, stop the fight by any means. It always makes him look threatening and usually wins him fights from anyone besides Angelina, who's tears are his natural-born enemy. But tonight, the young girl finds all she wants is to clam up in the hopes Mark just drops the whole thing.
“You’re a month out from graduating and I’m not gonna let anybody ruin that for you, including yourself.” He huffs and angrily runs a hand through his hair.
She mumbles something under her breath that Mark doesn’t quite catch, but it sounds an awful lot like “...rich coming from you.” He picks up his keys and her smooshed frozen corn bag. He’s clearly pushing down another wave of anger when he reaches out a hand to her and says, “Look, I think we both need some sleep. Let’s go home.”
She’s suddenly taken back to his confession over breakfast a while back that seems forever ago now – how admitting he’d been helpless to help someone in potential danger had twisted him up so bad inside he’d needed to forget, even for just a night. She doesn’t really recognize that man in the person standing front of her, not exactly. His broad shape is the same, his stony face still softens slightly at the sight of her, but she can suddenly see with perfect clarity the man that other people must see: Officer Mark Hoffman. She sees that her brother has changed when she wasn’t looking. Whatever qualms he had back then about being force-fed apathy down his gullet are gone. Her ex-boyfriend is in the hospital and Mark gets a two week vacation for it after one night of questioning. He’s warped the promise they made all those years ago:
Her brother will always return to her every night, safe like he’d promised, but despite how Mark had bawled and feared that putting himself before everyone else would paint a target on his back, it turns out all it really did was make him a better cop.
Angelina timidly accepts his hand, holding it close to her all the way to his banged up car.
Angelina had always loved her brother for as long as she could remember, but the big difference in age always made it hard for them to figure out how to like each other. Mark’s presence was nebulous at best in their house growing up, either because he started working the moment he was able to or because he got busy with school right around the time Angelina realized most people hung out with their siblings. It wasn’t until her tenth birthday when they started to get closer.
In 1980, Angelina watched Linda Fratianne win Silver skating to Carmen at the Lake Placid Olympics on their living room’s dingy TV set. Her father was still alive at this time and had a soft spot for sports, but no real way to connect with either of his kids over it. Apparently, a nine year old girl who actively tried to get out of PE and quit softball before she even saw a playing field and another man’s son whom her father actively avoided interacting with as much as possible didn’t pique the athletic interest of a man who’d rather sit on the couch and grunt at a hockey match than God forbid actually talk to his kids. Honestly, Mark getting the silent treatment from her father was especially funny when you realize he was the only person in their household who’d actually played a sport once upon a time and liked it. Maybe the ‘another man’s son’ thing grated on him more than she realized.
Anyways.
That night in 1980, her father switched the TV on after dinner and kept flipping through the channels trying to find something they could both watch together. Eventually, he settled on the winter Olympics showing what Angelina’s newest obsession would become: figure skating. Linda Fratianne’s long program entranced her from the moment she laid eyes on the golden sparkles adorning her bright red costume. She watched in awe as the ice skater’s palpable nerves at the beginning of the program melted away into this surge of confidence by the second movement, the audience clapping along when she’d triumphantly captivated them by her performance, a siren on the ice. Her father basically needed to drag her onto the couch by her ankles from how hard she’d stared at the screen from her spot directly in front of the TV.
After that day, her family would constantly catch her doing little twirls and jumps whenever they walked around stores or went shopping together and Angelina would balance on her tippy-toes around the house to see how tall she could get. Mark had teased her about her sudden obsession with figure skating by making sure he hummed louder than her and spun her in such fast circles it made her dizzy. It was usually all in good fun, but one day Angelina had had enough of his taunts and bit him on the hand that he’d pointed at her with, shouting, “At least I like something Mr Couldn’t Even Stick It With Soccer.”
How he’d recovered from that one, she never knew.
After that, Mark took her obsession in stride – he always sat patiently with her when she wanted to show him a move she’d learned or let her talk at him about another skater she’d read about in a book. Her mother would ask about her favorite programs and skaters, seemed genuinely interested in her newfound fascination with ice skating. Her father also usually allowed her to rant about the scoring system and the gorgeous costumes, albeit a little less patiently than Mark when he’d tell her after a couple of minutes that he was too busy to talk. But there were times where Angelina felt it wasn’t enough. It became crystal clear to everyone that at that point in her life, there was probably nothing Angelina wanted more than ice skating lessons. What better way to combine her interest in skating and her father’s love of watching other people play sports than learning how to actually skate on a thin sheet of ice? Angelina was convinced she was getting lessons when her father cleared his throat at the dinner table one night, getting ready for an announcement. Unfortunately, the only big news alert was that he’d been laid off, which definitely threw a wrench in any plans to get her lessons.
No matter how hard she begged or pleaded with him (“I won’t ask for anything for my birthday or Christmas this year!”), her father had turned into a real penny pincher during his time out of a job. Their mother’s part time job working behind the deli counter down the road didn’t bring much in, but her paltry sum was what they depended on for almost five months, so anything besides the essentials was simply disregarded. Her father even forbade anyone from using their family’s banged up car, a second generation Buick LeSabre that needed cajoling into running anyways, without express written permission from the president, the pope, and her father himself, to save on any bit of gas money they could. No library trips, no soda shop visits on weekends, and definitely no ice skating lessons.
So, when her birthday came during that time and her parents didn’t even take her to their local rec center’s rink, she blew up and locked herself in her room. She didn’t come out the entire night, not even when her mother knocked on her door to check on her with what was probably dinner or a small birthday dessert they'd splurged on. It was only when her parents went to bed later that night while she was still fuming under her covers that she heard the gentle bum-bum-ba-dum-dum at her door, a surefire sign that it was her brother knocking.
She tiptoed to her door to let him in and he stealthily closed the door behind him, brought a finger to his lips to hush her.
“Can you keep a secret?” he’d asked in a whisper.
She nodded her head silently. Mark pulled out their father’s car keys from his back pocket and quietly jingled them in front of her, “Good ‘cause if you rat on me, we’re both going down. Grab your coat and gloves.”
He opened her window while she rummaged through her closet and slid through the opening, reaching a hand out to help Angelina through the same way. They quickly made their way over to the garage where Mark manually opened the shutter door to open it as slowly and quietly as possible. He physically pulled the car out the garage when he put it in neutral and rolled the bucket of bolts to the end of their driveway, where he figured he was far enough away from their house to start the engine. He parked the car on the street to run up and close the garage up before jumping back into the driver’s seat. When he’d finished buckling them both in, Angelina asked him what they were doing. He looked at her, barely containing a grin as he asked, “How do you feel about takin’ a little drive with me to the ice rink on the douchey side of town?”
The “douchey side of town” in question was just the east side of the city where the residents attend the country clubs rather than work in them. But every winter one of the malls on the east end throws up a huge ice rink outside the building that gets so popular, most people need to book a visit in advance. She almost squealed at him before stifling the noise as she wrapped her tiny arms around her big brother, asking, “I thought we weren’t allowed?”
“Let’s just say your brother knows someone on that end of town who owes him a favor. Said he’ll keep the lights on for a few more hours than he’s supposed to, so we gotta hurry. I’ll buy dinner afterwards, too.”
Lost in her excitement for a beautiful moment, Angelina’s expression fell when she realized, “But Dad’s never gotten me lessons. I don’t know how to skate, Mark.”
“How hard can it be?”
—
There's not a soul in sight at the rink and no music playing over the loud speakers, so when Angelina and Mark both tripped and fell on the ice, the resounding smacks were deafening in the cold silence. They soon caught on that it's much easier to keep upright if they hold hands and hug the wall. After a couple of tries, they successfully mastered a slow glide across the ice while her brother held onto the rink’s railing for them.
“Well, think you’ll be good enough by the end of the night to do one of those double-axe-whatever-you-call-it?”
“It’s called a double axel jump you dumb jock and I’m gonna be so real with you Mark I’m, like, absolutely terrified right now.” She barked out a weak laugh while her brother laughed at her candidness. Not one to pass up an opportunity to scare his sister, Mark picked up the pace and dragged Angelina across the ice faster and faster, picking up enough speed Angelina felt the wind hit her face with a vengeance. She remembers she screeched and held her brother’s hand tighter. He squeezed back.
“Mark slow down or I’m gonna kick your butt!”
“I’d like to see you try, kid. It may be your birthday, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna stand here and take a beating from a squirt who can barely stand.”
Within moments of speaking, Mark fell flat on his ass. He hit the ground so hard, his feet actually left the ground like he’d cartoonishly slipped on a banana peel. At least he’d had the mind to release her hand so he didn’t take her down with him.
She skated over to his wipeout scene and said, “I’d call karma, but I think you deserve worse than this.”
“Shut it,” he’d called up to her from the ground while he recovered. He groaned and made to get back up. Angelina reached a hand out to him that he reluctantly accepted, but when she helped him back onto his feet, they both heard a loud POP! as his knees and spine cracked from the strain, the noise a stark contrast against the muted night. She slapped a gloved hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter threatening to spill out of her mouth.
Mark turned to her, “Don’t fuckin’ say nothing.” He put one of his hands on his waist and the other pointed a finger at her, trying to look stern, but the garish red mark blooming on the side of his forehead from his brief tryst with the ground combined with the try-hard glare he gave her looked so ridiculous Angelina couldn’t physically hold in her shriek of laughter. Her feet wobbled and she almost fell herself from how hard she’d laughed, but Mark grabbed her arm just before her skates left the ice. When he pulled her back up against him, there was another POP! from his elbow that made her knees give out, now focusing all her energy on trying to breathe instead of stand. Mark let her slowly drop to the ground like a melted ice cream cone losing its grip on its top scoop. She thought the ice would be colder, but as she lay there waiting for her giggling to die down, it wasn't so painful a chill pressed up against her cheek. Mark helped her up again when he’d made sure she was out of chuckles and looped his arm in hers as they continued skating slower again.
“At least my legs don’t give out when I’m being a dick.”
“Whatever, I know we both heard how loud that crack in your knees was. I don’t even need to say anything about it.”
“Leave my creaky knees alone you ice fiend.” He flicked her nose as he teased her.
She gently patted his arm. “I think it’s time to put you in a Home old man,” she laughed.
“Angie if it ever comes down to that just bash my head in with a hammer,” Mark’s face hurt from all the toothy smiling.
“Oh my God, why are you always so weird! ” she’d shouted and shoved his arm hard enough he fell straight back onto the ice. Mark decided very soon after that that it was time to head home.
They’d picked up cheap burgers and shakes from the most run down place they could find still open that late at night and scarfed down their food in the car before they got back home. Mark did much of the same to sneak them back in the house unnoticed and made sure to bring their trash inside with them lest they leave damning evidence of their crime. They both tumbled back in through Angelina’s bedroom window and high-fived when they heard no sign of stirring parents waking up and storming in immediately afterwards. Mark turned to Angelina to kiss the top of her head and leave her with, “Goodnight kiddo. Happy Birthday.” She slipped back into bed with all her frustration and anger dissolved.
Now, Mark had never been book smart – the way his grades teetered barely above flunking could tell you that – but he was always extremely perceptive of the people around him which tended to freak most people out. He could walk into a room and immediately tell you who’d had a rough night all because they put one less sugar packet in their coffee or who hated who in amongst a group of strangers they passed on the street. It was uncanny how good he was at reading people. Yet sometimes the guy was just so goddamn clueless. This with the fact Angelina was ten ensured their father instantly knew what had transpired the next morning, despite the evidence scrub.
The morning after their illegal outing, their father woke up to the needle on the gas gauge sitting much lower than it should have been and the telltale smell of french fry grease in the car. Their dad ripped into Mark so hard that day, even their mother had stepped in for once, though not before letting the man get a hit or two in. He’d grounded Angelina too for good measure, but not even that could sour the gift of sneaking out with her brother to a little girl’s equivalent of the Superdome and coming home afterwards bruised and battered from fights with a thick sheet of ice. When Mark entered her room that following night to pass along her dinner, he wore the swollen, slapped cheek from their dad like it was a badge of honor.
Angelina keeps that memory nestled deep within her heart, a ready salve to pull out in difficult times. She finds herself needing it more and more.
After Angelina’s high school graduation, Mark gently places a set of car keys into the palm of her hands. She’s absolutely stunned. He doesn’t say anything about it except, “Just be careful on the road. Promise me you’ll visit or at least fuckin’ call.” She’s almost tempted to tease him about it, but it’s about as close an affirmation of her independence as she’ll ever get out of him. She feels warm in her chest from her brother’s somewhat unwilling blessing to leave home. She wishes she felt bad enough about leaving their home to stay anyways. She doesn’t.
Angelina moves out that summer to enroll in an art program in Boston, far enough to put some distance between her and her brother, but not enough to completely shut him out. She visits when she can, but not as often as she could, making empty promises to Mark to see him more often all while knowing there are more and more times when he falls through the unfortunate cracks that form in these strange, transitory years of life. She puts a couple more boyfriends under her belt — none of them sick, but none end in disaster either. She gets a job, she loses a job. She grows up without her brother.
Then, two years into her program she gets a call from Mark with news. At this point, she can barely count the number of times she’s gone back home to visit Mark on her hands, but they do call each other when their schedules permit; it’s the one thing Mark had been adamant about in the beginning (“Call me an overbearing aunt, I don’t care, but so help me God Angie if you start ignoring my calls I’ll drive the police cruiser to your campus and pop you in the back seat in broad daylight.”) so she isn’t expecting Mark to drop a bomb on her like getting promoted to detective. Angelina almost drops the bulky plastic landline she’s cradling between her head and shoulder to the kitchen floor, only barely saving it from meeting a quick death. She doesn’t even say anything to Mark, she just starts screaming at him over the phone so loud her neighbor bangs on her wall. Even though she can’t see his face, she can feel him smiling through the phone.
“Thanks Angie. So, there’s gonna be a ceremony and I’d, uh, appreciate it if you could come?” The fact he poses it as a question, like she’d ever miss it, makes her heart constrict. “I’m sure it’ll be boring, but at least you’ll get to make fun of me in my monkey suit again. For old times sake?”
“So long as you save me a seat up front” she sighs. He sounds happy.
The ceremony is actually to celebrate all the recently promoted cops in the district, so Mark’s detective promotion is lumped in with a dozen or so others. There’s even a couple of newly instated Lieutenants in attendance. Mark slicked his hair back for the ceremony in a look that somehow didn’t ooze greasy douchebag and he looks sharp in his pressed and ironed uniform. She is a little disappointed they made him wear his police uniform one last time, but at least she has the satisfaction of never needing to see it after today. He looks halfway decent when he puts the effort in.
The commissioner is the one calling all the names up and is posing with the newly minted detectives for their photo op in the press. When he calls Mark’s name up, he sheepishly looks right at Angelina and smiles at her instead of the camera for his photo with the commissioner. He looks like he’s got to be the youngest detective here. He looks truly happy if somewhat embarrassed by the whole ordeal.
After the ceremony ends, Angelina hugs him so close and tight she wonders why she ever moved away. Mark doesn’t cry, wouldn’t dream of it in front of his co-workers at an important ceremony, but from the way his arms are so gently wrapped around her, she knows he missed her badly enough to want to cry.
When she’s twenty-three, she moves back to the city she grew up in to be closer to Mark, now a semi-fresh art graduate with a lucrative job offer that will allow her to stay — a decent school in the next district over from her brother’s station reached out to offer her a position as their resident art instructor. She doesn’t even sleep on it, just hears where the school is located and asks when she can start. She moves to a small apartment that’s within a couple bus rides from Mark’s place and they fall right back into step like nothing had happened, no distance, no hospitals, no funerals. He gives her most of his off-duty nights and in return she visits his place whenever he works late weekends to have dinner and watch movies like they’re kids again. It’s the closest she's felt to her brother since she was thirteen and sobbing at their mother's funeral.
Two and a half years later, Seth Baxter rips her throat open so badly the coroner has to scratch out where he’s written “Cause of death: Decapitation.”
When Angelina was taken from him, all of Hoffman’s emotions were condensed into one of two things: too much or absolutely nothing. The days he felt nothing were much easier, the numbness allowing him to get through the weeks somewhat functionally. If the station coffee burned his tongue and throat, so what? If a couple of perps got roughed up on his watch, who cared? If Hoffman wandered out into a busy street in a drunken stupor, well, he hopes whatever poor schmuck has to clean his guts off the pavement gets paid good money for it. And if Hoffman needed a drink or two to get to that nothingness, then so be it. Thing is, the man didn’t drink to forget Angelina. How could he forget her? Drinking just made thinking about her hurt less, until she was just a slow heartbeat under his wrist he could press on to stop with his thumb. Nothingness keeps things normal, keeps his body going through the motions until his other emotion inevitably shuts the normalcy down. It wasn't until John reached down into him and pulled Something Else out that he'd long forgotten about, something that condemned him the moment John decided to redirect his fury instead of kill him for it.
So yes, the worst days are when he can’t stop the ebb of hungry grief from dowsing him, a puddle of gasoline just waiting for a lit match to fall. After Angie, when Hoffman couldn't feel nothing, it was everything at once. Like the floodgates had opened. Some days, almost anything could set him off. Unfinished pencil sketches could bring him to tears, he couldn't drive near the bus stop he'd picked her up at so many times, hell, he'd even needed to apologize to an intern at the station one day when she'd fixed her hair a certain way that took the air right out of his lungs. Hoffman had never been a crier growing up; his mother, father, and step-father could all attest to that were any of them alive. But Angie killed whatever small piece of him was keeping the waters at bay: staring bleary-eyed into empty glasses in bars, zoning out in the middle of the precinct sometimes for hours, some days not even making it into work because he just couldn’t turn anything off . It was like the grief scooped out all of what made him human and left him as some poor, hollowed out thing trying to relearn how to be a person from scratch again with no one to guide him. He couldn’t even make himself feel nothing when he’d watched the pendulum tear that scumbag open; Hoffman’s fingernails dug into the wall by the peephole so hard he’d scratched marks into the concrete. Oh yes, he’d sat there and watched, but he couldn’t stand one second of it, constantly asking himself Is it over yet? over and over while the bastard had screamed about how nearly ripping his little sister’s head clean off was a fucking accident.
His little sister.
Could he even call himself a brother anymore when he no longer thinks about her in the present? Only in “was”? To know the awful torment of what it feels like to be ‘before’ and ‘after’ being a brother? The moment Hoffman condemned her to “was” was when she’d really and truly died. Seth may have been the one to take her life, but his hands were not completely clean from staining her memory. He finds himself often fast forwarding and rewinding through all their shared moments, desperately trying to pinpoint where he’d sealed her fate:
Was it the day Angie came home with a black eye in high school and he’d beaten a kid within an inch of his life? When he’d made his little sister look at him like he was a stranger? Or was it all the times he’d shown her he cared, giving her enough false hope to move back to their poisoned city to be closer to him again? She didn’t know that he’d just always been this sick, too trusting for her own good to see her brother as anything other than the man who’d snuck her out of the house when their dad was having a bad day, who’d covered for her when she played hooky with friends, who was able to protect her at one point in his goddamn life. Maybe if he’d been kinder, maybe if he’d been less angry, maybe if he’d pushed her away to keep her from moving back and just not allowed his loneliness get the better of him, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe if he changed anything at all she’d be alive. But he can’t.
Instead, somewhere in a dilapidated bathroom deep underground, a million light years away from where he’d fallen to his knees at Angie’s bed, Mark Hoffman prays for the first time in his life. His fingers are bloody from where he’s tried to scratch the flesh off his chained leg, he’s pretty sure he's broken his ankle, and he’s still tossing around the idea of chewing his own foot off in his head when the fatigue sets in. So, lying on the bloodied tile, he starts to pray so hard he hopes whatever absent deity that drew the short stick the day Hoffman was born chokes on his prayer. He prays that he's allowed to see Angelina one more time before they drop him into a vat of flames so hot his retinas will dissolve from the heat before he even makes it to the bottom. He fantasizes that in this shallow, imaginative purgatory of a visitation room, Angelina will actually want to see him too.
He knows he won't be so lucky.