“Messages?” Katie cut her eyes to his. Nothing in his posture suggested that he was tense, that he knew anything about the reporter who’d called.
“Yeah,” he said, pounding a nail into particleboard. “Your phone rang a lot when I was waiting for you, Friday. Forgot to mention it.”
It was one of those interminable, distorted pockets of time: a thousand thoughts crowding her brain. This was her opening, the opportunity she’d been waiting for to tell him about what had happened to her family. She imagined that he’d probably already pieced together some facts about why her father wasn’t around, why she rarely mentioned her parents, but she had never laid out the details. Words ricocheted through her mind like bits of gravel; they had a violent force of their own, sucking her further into herself. Together, those words didn’t add up to anything cogent. It was impossible to explain any of this to him when she herself still understood so little about what had happened that night—and afterward. It was time to say something, to try—and yet. She wasn’t ready; she couldn’t.
“Oh, that,” she said, slipping the fingernail of her thumb between her top and bottom teeth. “Nothing important.”
Zev raised his arms high to place a painting onto a hook. He regarded it silently, then tilted the painting to the left. “I’ve decided to rent some studio space in Bushwick, or maybe Bed-Stuy,” he said. “I was looking at places yesterday, and I think I’ve found something. Bare bones, but there’s a toilet, at least.”
“What about school? Teaching?” Katie asked. Zev taught three classes a semester at Vassar and had use of a large studio behind the maintenance garage. Years ago, that was where all the art students would hang out, smoking. That was back when Zev still smoked.
“Been there over fifteen years,” he said, grunting slightly as he adjusted the painting again. “Time for me to do more of my own work, be more independent. And I’m feeling the city vibe. You know?” He flashed his eyes at her—just a second—and she understood he was asking her if she wanted to see him more often.
“Yeah, cool,” she said, hating herself for her noncommittal tone, her childish vocabulary. She knew she should be happy, that this was a good thing, but she stalled. If Zev had a studio in Brooklyn, he’d be down in the city more often; surely this was good. This was nothing to be afraid of. As it was, they saw each other two or three times a month, and he stayed at her place for a few days at a stretch. When he wasn’t with her, she counted off the days until he would be back. Didn’t that mean she should want to see him more often?
“So, um. This straight now?” he asked.
“A little to the right. More.” The painting appeared to be a rendering of a very large baby, pink skinned and bawling. At first glance it seemed literal, almost graceless, until Katie saw that Zev had painted flesh-toned weapons rendered in astonishing detail over the entire surface of the child’s skin. Pistols, shotguns, brass knuckles, a cutlass, bullets, tanks. You couldn’t tell from far away, but up close the weapons were delicate, almost photographic. He’d done a fine cross-hatching with a black pen that looked like an etching layered on top of the paint. The contrast between the initial assumption about what she was seeing and the reality of what was actually depicted was jarring; that must be the point, she figured. “Now to the left a bit,” she said. “There, you got it.”
Behind her, Janet, in the yellow top, was yelling at the boys to hurry up. The party would be starting in a few hours, and only about half the pieces were in place, though the partitions were finally up. Stepping down and taking a few paces back, Zev surveyed his work. He didn’t seem fazed by the hubbub or Janet’s frenetic tone—or Katie’s reaction. When he finally turned around and looked at her with his blue, blue eyes, the washed-out blue of shallow water, his face registered surprise. “You are very pale, Katie. You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and right then it was true. When his attention was focused on her, his calmness was like a breeze on her skin.
“Good. Because I think I should move in with you.” He cracked a smile, and the white of his teeth dazzled her, like the pop of a flash. “I think I should be based in the city and go up to Vassar when I’m teaching, not the other way around. What do you say? You’ve got space. Or we could find somewhere better, put our money together.” He put his arms around her and stuck his face into her neck, his nose in the warm crook, his breath moist on her skin. “I want to be with you. And I think you want to be with me.”
He was waiting for an answer, but he would not push her. And so she nodded her head slightly, bumping against his, and she squeezed him back, hiding her face, while inside there raged a blood-soaked battle between what she wanted, what she deserved, and what she could actually have.
3
Every Sunday evening, the phone in her apartment rang at the same hour, six thirty. Sometimes a few minutes later, but more often than not exactly on time. It never failed to startle her even though she was expecting it. An automated voice came over the line, asking Katie if she would accept the charges from Wallkill Correctional Facility.
Why her father insisted on doing it this way, she wasn’t sure; it was inefficient. He wanted a landline, not a prepaid cell phone account. He claimed he could hear her better. He said it was easier for him. He liked knowing she was home. Maybe he wanted to be able to picture her sitting in the very same spot (on the edge of her couch) every single week, her attention centered solely on him. Maybe he didn’t want to share her with a busy street corner or a rollicking subway train or another person in some friend’s house, a friend he hadn’t had the chance to meet. It was inconvenient to rush home every Sunday no matter what, but as soon as she heard his voice on the end of the line, she’d forget her irritation. The instant comfort she felt settled her down, reminded her what she cared about. Loyalty. Steadfastness. She was proud to be his one steady rock in a sea of shifting allegiances.
Katie stared at the receiver, off its base, the curled cord lying on the wood floor next to the trim board. The phone was still unplugged. In order to receive her father’s call, Katie had to plug it back in, and whether she wanted to or not, she’d hear the beep beep beep of the answering service telling her there were messages waiting for her. It took her a few minutes before she felt ready.
Beep beep beep, she heard.
Her breath tightened, but she was too curious not to dial in. Marjorie O’Hannon had left a message on Friday, then restrained herself and only called twice more on Saturday afternoon.
“I wanted to let you know,” her recording said, “that I covered the Duke case, and now Saint Patrick’s, the boarding school? I, uh, well, I assume you heard about it—the boy was convicted yesterday. Statutory rape.”
When Katie heard that word—rape—she stiffened. It never got easier.
A sigh was audible on the message. “So truly, I understand this . . . this he said/she said thing. Especially now, after the Stanford swimmer case, the extremely light reprimand. It’s easy to get distracted from the truth.”
Then a male voice on another message. Jules Forsythe from the Baltimore Sun. “Your father’s case was under the jurisdiction of New York State, but of course statutory rape’s not regional,” he said. “We’d like to hear your opinion on issues related to consent, the age of consent. The girl in the Saint Patrick’s case was fourteen too.”
Each reporter mentioned having picked up on a reference to her father’s case in the judge’s summation at the Saint Patrick’s rape trial, which had wrapped up the previous week. The last one, Cartwright—clipped tone, all business—paused breathlessly at the end of her message. “I know your community turned out to support your father, big-time,” she said. “I think you should take this chance to stick up for him too.” No one but O’Hannon mentioned anything about having contacted or having spoken to Lulu Henderson.
Katie hung up. As if she hadn’t stuck up for her father! No one could pretend to know him as she did. They hadn’t seen him in the middle of the night, fetching migrai
ne medicine for her mother from the all-night pharmacy. They didn’t know that he tipped the newspaper boy a hundred dollars at Christmas and invited a junior colleague to dinner every Sunday night after his fiancée died in a hit-and-run. That he happily gave his children his sweater when they were caught in the cold or a stubbled kiss when they awoke to a nightmare.
She moved about the room in a daze. Anyway, even if she were to talk to one of these journalists, what would she say? She had nothing to add to everything that had already been said—the jury had decided, and the sentence had been served. People thought whatever they thought. There was no changing people’s minds now. Her father had been wrongly accused, but there was so much more to it than that fact. Though the truth was that all these years later, there were important things she had never come close to understanding: Why had Lulu accused him in the first place? What exactly had led to her father’s conviction? It was beginning to eat away at her again, this realization of everything she didn’t know. There was a part of her that wanted answers.
It would be time to head back for Zev’s opening party soon, and she pulled a short black dress over her head. Green boots with sharp toes and cowboy heels. In the mirror, she saw hints of purple under her eyes. She applied concealer, pulled her hair up in a spiky blonde bun, and slipped on a pair of hoops. Tonight was important. The gallery owner, Hans, had invited some big collectors to view Zev’s work. No one would be paying any attention to Katie, but she wanted to be there to share in Zev’s accomplishment, to see the happiness spread over his face, to watch him work the crowd. Yet what she really wanted to do was retreat, curl up in bed again, turn her head into the fusty pillow, and dream herself into a different life. Could she pretend to be all right? Could she do it for him?
It was 6:33 p.m. when the phone rang. Katie waited for the recording to end and answered yes, she would accept the charges. The crackle on the line changed tone: the line was live.
“Sweetheart!” John Gregory said.
“Hi, Dad.” Her throat was dry. “How’s it going?”
As usual, they made small talk. The weather in New York (always a little different than upstate), her boss, a new book on neuroscience her father had just finished. He had been on a jag recently, reading everything he could get his hands on to do with brain science. This followed his Shakespeare period (every play the man had ever written, including Cymbeline and King John), his Norman Mailer obsession (“What a pig!”), and his earlier James Baldwin period. He was on good terms with the librarian, who let him order books from other library systems and take out as many as five at once. “But it’s the last time I’ll be going to this library,” he told her, sucking in his breath. “Last time ever. Can’t even finish the books I’ve already got before I’m out of here. Can you believe it, honey?”
“You know the exact time and everything? June 23, right?”
“Don’t know about the ‘and everything’ part, but yes. Had my SORA meeting—”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, just means I’m all set to go.”
She wanted to know what he meant, but this was like a game they’d been playing all her life, and she didn’t know how to change the rules. The way it worked was that she’d be told whatever it was her parents wanted her to know, and she wasn’t supposed to press for more. She thought then of the reporters and how they knew her father was being released soon. Could you look that sort of stuff up? Would they hound him, too, now that he was getting out, or would they have already crucified him in the press by then?
“You’ll come pick me up, right? Would so love to see the Falcon out there, idling at the curb, waiting for me by the pearly gates of Wallkill Penitentiary,” he said. He cleared his throat. “You think your mother might come too—just to say hello?”
“Oh, Daddy,” she said. Something inside her slipped, a shifting of organs that hurt. Most often they talked about day-to-day things, what he ate, what he was reading, and he asked her about every detail of her week—but when he talked like this, as hopeful as a child, her thoughts always returned to when their roles had been reversed, when he’d been in charge and she’d been the kid. His voice as he read to her when she was little, her hand clutching his forearm, riveted. Conjuring up entire worlds that seemed so real to her. Now she had to be the one to guide him, to nudge him back into reality. “Mum’s not going to come see you. You know that.”
“No, Katie, listen. You never know. It’s been a long time. Seeing someone in the flesh”—he hesitated—“I mean, no bars, no Perspex between us? She might be curious. If she still feels something. You know?”
Her parents had been divorced since her second year of college. While she and her father didn’t discuss it, Katie assumed it had been that long since he’d actually seen or spoken to her mother. “She remarried, Dad. Come on, you know that. She’s married to another guy.”
He made a dismissive noise on the other end of the line. “Whatever that means these days.”
“So the plan, Dad. The Falcon? I don’t know how that’s going to be possible.”
“I’ll need a car. Figured you could haul it out of storage for me, make sure it runs.”
She smiled; this was just like him. “Because I’m such an awesome mechanic?”
“Ask your brother for help.”
“Because he’s such an awesome mechanic?” They both laughed.
“No, seriously, why not dust off the old lady and give her some respect?”
“And you’ll stay with that friend—Alden what’s-his-name?”
“Such a great guy, really solid,” John said. “But he’s got some sort of crisis; it’s just one of those things. I don’t want to be a burden. I told him it was no problem at all. I’m lucky to have two great kids, right? A whole backup team. Maybe I can stay with you a night or two, honey? Now your roommate’s gone?”
She tipped her head to one side. He’d talked about staying with an old friend from West Mills, where she’d grown up. It had seemed like a decent-enough plan—after all, where else was he supposed to go? David was an acting student living in a dodgy rental in lower Brooklyn, and Katie lived in a one-bedroom with almost no privacy. And while her father knew about Zev, she hadn’t told him yet that they were romantically involved. He’d gotten into the habit of calling Zev “the Israeli.” He meant it playfully, but there was an undertone of suspicion to it, an intimation that there was no way a man with an artsy job and a background like Zev’s could be entirely savory. Katie knew who her father wanted for her: a prep school boy her age, with a job at Goldman Sachs. John had been a commercial banker for Citigroup; he believed in careers that came with job specs and salaries, paid vacations and a decent-sounding title, something that had cachet. A career in which you could work your way up, slowly but surely, to the top. It was because of him that she’d chosen to go into consulting.
“Okay, well, sure—of course you can stay here,” she said. Katie was beginning to understand what her father’s freedom would mean: people would be taking sides again. It was easy not to talk about your father when he was in prison, but it would be different once he was out. There were reasons for everything, and at some point people wanted to know what those reasons were. She was sure Alden had had second thoughts, and it pained her. Of course her father could stay over if he wanted; she would figure out the Zev issue later. “Stay as long as you like; it’s fine with me, Dad.”
“Well, I’ll be heading to the cabin, living up there for a while. Just until—”
“Really?” she said, looking up from the scuffed toes of her boots. He wanted to return to Eagle Lake? Her grandfather had bought the Big House and the cabin in the late sixties, back when he and Gram and their only daughter had left London. It was where Charlie and John had spent every summer vacation after getting married. They’d first taken Katie to the cabin when she was two weeks old, still shriveled and mewling. Her childhood had been measured in summers at the lake, until all that had stopped for good. She hadn’t been back, n
ot once, since the summer she was fifteen. “Is that . . . did you talk with Grumpy about that?”
“No, I did not talk to him. Your grandfather has no say in this, Katie. He gave the cabin to your mother when he sold the Big House and moved back to England, and she’s got a bunch of our stuff in there. Your mother is letting me use it.” He paused. “For a while, at least. Just till I get back on my feet.”
So they had talked, her mother and father.
“You surprised?” he asked.
“Um, yeah,” she said. “I guess so. I mean, Mum isn’t exactly—”
“She’s been very generous.” John cleared his throat. “So, short notice, I know, but can you go there for me, check it out? Find out about the Falcon too? Your mother says everything’s been locked up for years.” In the background there was a bell, the sound of another man’s voice. Katie knew exactly where he was, and she imagined him in that space, a man waiting to be released into his life again: He stood in a pale-green corridor with pay phones lining the walls. Fluorescent lights (they gave him headaches). The phones were next to the dining hall (he could guess what was for dinner by the smells saturating the air). When the line of waiting prisoners behind him got too long, he’d sometimes have to ring off abruptly. They had spoken nearly every Sunday, with only a few exceptions, for six years. Over two hundred calls.
“Dad . . . I can’t,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to Eagle Lake.”
“Look it, I’m not asking you for much. I just need the water to be running. Is the roof still up, that kind of stuff. It’ll take you a day, max. It’ll be no big deal.”
“No, it won’t, and that’s not the point.”
“Then what is your point?” he asked. There was silence while they both thought their private thoughts. Then he said, “And the car, it’s in the Nicholses’ garage. That’s what Charlie said.”
“I really don’t want to.” She poured herself a shot of warm tequila and drank it down in two gulps. “And I definitely can’t get the car running.”
The Forgotten Hours Page 3
