Fool Me Once

Maya and Claire had grown up on the bottom two floors of a town house in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Her father had been a college professor at NYU. Her mother worked six years as a legal defense attorney but ended up quitting to raise her two children. Her parents weren’t pacifists or socialists or anything like that, but they certainly leaned toward the left. They sent their daughters to summer camp at Brandeis University. They made them learn wind instruments and read the classics. They gave their girls formal religious training but stressed their own belief that these were allegories and myths, not facts. They owned no handguns. They didn’t hunt or fish or do anything that hinted at outdoorsy.

Maya had been drawn to the idea of flying airplanes at a young age. No one knew how or why. No one in the family flew or had any interest in anything involving flight or mechanics or really anything in the general vicinity. Her parents had assumed that Maya’s obsession was a phase. It wasn’t. Her parents neither condemned nor condoned her decision to apply for the Army’s elite pilot program. They just didn’t seem to get it.

During basic training, she had been given a Beretta M9, and as much as people looked for all kinds of complicated psychological reasons why, Maya simply liked firing the gun. Yes, she got that weapons could kill, and understood the destructive nature and could see how many people, mostly men, used them as a dangerous and stupid compensation for their own inadequacies. She got that some people liked guns because of the way the guns made them feel, that some kind of unhealthy transference was going on, and that often it was a very bad thing.

But in her case, Maya simply liked shooting. She was also good at it and drawn to it. Why? Who the hell knows? The same reason people are drawn to basketball or swimming or collecting antiques or skydiving, she guessed.

Eileen stood up and brushed the dirt off her knees. She smiled and started toward Maya. Maya got out of the car.

“Hey, you!” Eileen said.

“Why did you give me that nanny cam?”

Just like that.

Eileen stopped midstride. “Why? What happened?”

Maya looked for that feisty freshman. There were signs of her every once in a while. She was recovering, but time passes and wounds don’t fully heal. Eileen had been so smart and tough and resourceful-or so it appeared-and then she met the wrong man. Simple as that.

Robby had been so doting at first. He would flatter Eileen and brag about her. He was proud of her, telling everyone how smart Eileen was; then he became too proud of her, the kind of proud that plays on that line between love and obsession. Claire was concerned, but it was Maya who noticed the bruises first. Eileen had started wearing long sleeves. But neither sister did anything at first because they simply couldn’t believe it. Maya had figured that victims of domestic abuse were more… victim-y? Weak women get into these situations. Lost or poor or uneducated women, women with no backbone-those are the ones men abuse.

Strong women like Eileen? No way.

“Just answer the question,” Maya said. “Why did you give me that nanny cam?”

“Why do you think?” Eileen countered. “You’re a widow with a little girl.”

“For protection.”

“You really don’t see that?”

“Where did you buy it?”

“What?”

“The digital frame with the hidden camera. Where did you buy it?”

“Online.”

“What store?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Maya just stared at her.

“Sheesh, okay, I bought it on Amazon. What’s going on, Maya?”

“Show me.”

“Are you serious?”

“If you bought it online, there will be a record of it under past orders. Show me.”

“I don’t understand any of this. What happened?”

Maya had so admired Eileen. Her sister could be a bit of goody-goody. Eileen was wilder. Eileen made her feel good. Eileen got her.

But that was a long time ago.

Eileen angrily pulled off her gardening gloves and threw them on the ground. “Fine.”

She started for the door. Maya followed behind her. When she caught up, Maya could see Eileen’s face was set.

“Eileen…”

“You were right before.”

“About?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Robby. That’s how I got rid of him for good.”

“I don’t understand.”

The house was a split-level built in the 1960s. They stood in the den. One wall was covered with photographs of Kyle and Missy. No pictures of Eileen. No pictures of Robby. But it was the poster on the other wall that drew Maya’s eye. Claire had the same one in her den. Using four black-and-white photographs running left to right, the framed print showed the construction stages of the Eiffel Tower. Eileen and Claire had bought them on a backpacking trip the three of them-Eileen, Maya, Claire-took to France during the summer when Eileen and Claire were twenty and Maya was nineteen.