The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  “Cushing,” she whispers.

  “I knew it,” he says, but he doesn’t tell her what it is that he knows. Instead, he holds on to her elbow and guides her upright. “Come with me.”

  Her head begins spinning, and she turns away from him and retches against the fence. There is no one else on the street. The house behind her continues to pulse with music, and she tries to swallow the noises and the pain.

  The little dog is off his leash, and when they get to the other side of the street, the man calls, “Mira!” and the dog scampers across the road to his side. He unlocks an ancient Kia, puts his hand on Katie’s head again, and guides her into the front seat like a police officer guides a perp into a cruiser. The car smells of turpentine and ropes and is filled with boxes and bags and canvases. After sinking into the front seat, Katie leans her head back, and a shudder courses through her.

  “You don’t need to be afraid,” he says, putting the key in the ignition.

  “I’m not afraid.” Her head throbs with every syllable.

  “Well, good, but you should be more cautious. You can’t just trust everyone”—he interrupts himself by hesitating—“in general, I mean to say.” He pulls into the street. In the fog of her stupendous hangover, she thinks to herself that under different circumstances she would consider him handsome.

  “What’s your name?” he asks. His hands on the steering wheel are scrubbed clean. That is where the fresh smell is coming from.

  “I’m Katie.” She tries to smile. “Do you know where to go?”

  “Yes, I know where to go,” he answers. The interior light of the car is still on, and when he looks at her, his eyes are washed out, a weak blue. “I’m Zev. I teach at Vassar. Studio art, sculpture. I’ve seen you around campus before.”

  “So you’re a stalker, then.”

  He laughs. “Yes, and you are just a little girl, though you don’t seem to think so.”

  “Am I in trouble? You a provost or something?”

  When he doesn’t answer, she thinks he might be a weirdo after all, someone who wants to teach her a lesson. But he is intent on the road, his mouth curled upward slightly. At Collegeview Terrace he pulls up to the dorm, and he doesn’t get out of the car to take her into her room as she thinks he might. But the way he looks at her when she pokes her head back in to say thank you—his gaze is so penetrating that it makes her think that maybe this is the beginning of something, but she doesn’t know what.

  34

  The sound of running water, a sharp smell. Katie kicked the door of her apartment closed behind her, lugging three plastic shopping bags. Could it be her father already? He had finally called to tell her he was coming over that night, and she’d gone food shopping after work. But he didn’t have a key.

  “Hello?” she called out. Then she smelled it more distinctly: oil paint.

  A large canvas was propped up against the far wall, about three feet by five. It had three figures on it, a woman and two men, one looming and stretched out, something soft, feathers perhaps, stuck in the black paint of his bones. The other man had no face but papier-mâché hands attached to the canvas that reached out, painted a luminous white. The female figure was somewhere between a girl and a woman and had been rendered in amazing detail with vibrant yellows and reds. Zev called this technique sfumato; he’d apply lighter colors over a dark glaze so the paint pulsed with life. The female appeared to hover over the other figures, to emerge from the darkness of the picture, delicate, ephemeral. Tiny gold buttons on her jacket glinted, and she wore jewels in her ears. In her hands she held something that seemed to be the focus of the painting, but it was smudged, as though purposefully unclear or unfinished. The girl’s hair was blonde, almost incandescent. Like Katie’s.

  Zev emerged from the bathroom. His silvery hair was slicked back, darkened by water, his skin a glowing brown hue as though he’d just come from picking grapes in Greece under a punishing sun or visiting family in Tel Aviv. Katie’s towel was slung around his hips, threads trailing along his damp shins. In his hand he held a razor.

  She dropped the bags and grinned at him like an idiot. “What the hell? You’re back already!”

  “Hey, there. My last panel was canceled—I took an earlier flight back.” He indicated the door with the razor. “It’s okay? That I let myself in?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure,” she said. So he’d been traveling; that’s why he hadn’t answered her email. She pointed to the painting. “Wow, Zev. It’s incredible. It’s supposed to be me?”

  He smiled. “I’ve been working on it for the past few weeks. A friend was storing it for me.”

  “It wasn’t in your show?”

  “It’s for you.”

  “Thank you, Zev. I mean, it’s . . . I don’t even know what to say.” When they embraced, his skin was damp against her face, and it felt so good. She fought back a sudden surge of tears: He doesn’t know, she thought. He doesn’t know anything. What am I going to say?

  “You okay?” He held her at arm’s length.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Is it about the test? I’m sorry—I saw it in the trash can.”

  They eyed each other, trying to assess what the other one was thinking. She could not still the percussive pounding in her chest. His voice was neutral, his face composed. He’d been smiling at her, and now he was serious. Did that mean he was hiding anger or fear—that he hated the idea of having a child? Or was he waiting to see what she said? She needed to know at least on some level what his gut reaction was before she could begin the work of knowing what she wanted.

  “You are shocked,” he said. “I didn’t mean to snoop; it was right there, lying on the top.”

  “I—I just took it. Yesterday morning.” She hoisted the bags onto the kitchen counter and kicked off her shoes. She had bought steaks for her father.

  Zev lingered on the other side of the island. “I’m so sorry; we were careless, and . . . and that I put you in this position.”

  “I’m a big girl too,” she said, unable to tell from his tone if he was saying this was a disaster from which they had to recover or an opportunity. Was he saying it was up to her to choose? The uncertainty and fear made her sharper than she intended to be. “I know how babies are made.”

  “A surprise like this. It’s disorienting, no? But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

  Certainly, she couldn’t regret those heady moments when they’d lost themselves in the timeless dark. Katie couldn’t imagine flicking on a light, reaching for a condom. She wanted the dream of losing herself to be possible; she wanted to be safe while also being free. But that didn’t mean she was ready to be a mother. Freedom and motherhood were not synonymous.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked. His sad eyes made Katie want to run a finger over his brows, smooth out the worry lines. “I have so much I want to say . . . but I don’t know.”

  “I just—I mean, I don’t feel ready. I can’t make a decision just like that,” she said. “I’m not ready.”

  “Of course, I know. I’m sure.” He paused. “It’s not the same for me; I know that. But Katie, a child? A child is a beautiful gift.”

  She looked away. He wanted the baby.

  “I can’t tell you what to do. I would never tell you what to do,” he said. “But we can choose to see this as a gift. A chance to build something together. Something very, very important.”

  It wasn’t just a child he wanted; he wanted to have a child with her. He trusted that she could be the mother she would need to be for the sake of their baby. This was incredible; this was beautiful and good—and yet a sickly, creeping anxiety overtook her. It was one thing to admit her tentative hopes for them as a couple, maybe even as a family, and another to finally come clean about her past. How could she know that he wouldn’t be disgusted with her for keeping so much from him?

  “Come here,” he said, pulling her by the hand toward the couch. He put one arm ove
r her shoulder, and she nestled in, the scent of her own soap and shampoo on him. “It’s not a disaster. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

  She began to cry, trying to swallow the noise, hide the tightening of her muscles.

  He pulled back to get a look at her. “It will be all right, Katie,” he said, his eyes an unstable gray. “I promise you. We will work it out.”

  “There’s something else I really need to tell you,” she said.

  Zev made her some Manzanilla tea he’d brought back from Spain while she changed into leggings and splashed her face with cold water. He threw on a T-shirt and jeans and took a seat on the armchair. He’d pulled away from her, not just his body but his spirit, his whole being screaming of separation, as though their sense of communion had been a brief delusion. Perhaps he thought she would tell him she had been sleeping with someone else, that the baby was not his. After all, they hadn’t agreed to be exclusive; they had been careful, both of them, to keep their options open.

  “It’s not about being pregnant,” she said. “It’s, um. It’s about my father. Something I haven’t told you.”

  “Okay . . .” he said.

  “Something awful happened, at that place I went—my grandfather’s place at Eagle Lake. When I was a teenager.”

  “To you, Katie?” Zev’s careful, neutral expression collapsed. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What happened?”

  “No, no—not me. To my father, and, well, my friend was part of it. She was my best friend.”

  She started with meeting a girl named Lulu at a Walmart. The endless carefree summers at her grandfather’s house. The cabin, the rope. They met a boy; they were so young—the memories tumbled out. An insidious jealousy, a sense of competition began growing between them—then, months later, the accusation of rape, out of nowhere.

  That ugly word: rape. When you spoke it aloud, it changed the very air you breathed. Zev remained silent as she was talking, but his face told the story of what his heart felt.

  She explained that her father had just been released from jail, and she had been getting calls from reporters that stirred up something murky inside her. That his freedom was not like she’d expected. She was—and she hesitated here, picking her words carefully—she was confused.

  “You think it was wrong?” Zev asked. He looked as though gravity had tugged at his face and body and he could not resist the terrible downward pull. “You think he did not deserve to go to jail?”

  “I was so sure, totally sure it was all a lie.” She stared at his face, and the intensity of his concentration gave her courage. “But I could never figure out why. I mean, why would she lie?” She told him about the transcripts, about finding the paperwork from the trial at the cabin and how all this had set her off on a journey. The explanation came out of her in an astonishing rush of energy and fear. She choked on her words and just kept going.

  When she mentioned the article she had read about dissociative disorder, his eyes sharpened. “And this girl, Lulu. You have spoken with her?” Zev asked.

  “I called her last week. But she wouldn’t talk; she, um . . . she hung up on me,” Katie said. The tea was cooling, and she took a sip, but the mug clanged against her teeth, and she set it down. “It was awful. Awful. I felt so bad for her, and I was trying to tell her I understood things better now, but it all came out wrong.”

  There were footsteps on the stairs leading to her apartment, a rap on her door. She hadn’t even noticed night falling. Windows looked out onto the building opposite, where lights were being switched on, like fireflies awakening. While they’d been talking, she’d forgotten her father was coming, and now he was at the door, iridescent shadows under his eyes and even more stubble on his chin, his clothes unchanged.

  “Daddy!” she said. A flash of impatience was almost instantly supplanted by concern: Had he slept at all? “Are you okay?”

  “Hello, beautiful lady,” he said, bustling past her and putting down a large blue nylon bag, which still had a cardboard price tag attached to it. “Your father has been one busy man, and he’s here to get some nosh. My lord, it’s good to be back among the living.”

  Turning toward her, he caught sight of Zev in the living area, standing with his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans.

  “Aha,” John said. “You’ve got company.”

  “Dad, this is Zev. My, uh, boyfriend,” Katie said, letting out a tentative laugh. “Zev, this is John Gregory, my father.”

  “I see. Your boyfriend,” John said, reaching out to grab Zev’s hand and smiling broadly. “Delighted.”

  It had been six years since John had eaten seafood, so they decided to get sushi instead of eating the steak Katie bought. The three of them headed off to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant two blocks from her apartment. They sat in the back at a small table near the kitchen. Zev was oriented toward her father, as though pulled in by the net of his energy. John talked unabashedly about his years in prison, telling one ludicrous story after another, and after a while Zev relaxed and began to laugh along with him. Katie could see this was her father’s intention: normalizing that which usually made people feel uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be treated like a leper. He wanted people to admire his fortitude, his good humor, and his strength. See that he’d turned this experience into something positive, something that made people at dinner in a restaurant laugh into their glasses of sake.

  Her father shoveled the food in, chewing hastily, as though someone might snatch the next unagi roll away from him. Zev replenished their sake, and Katie abstained. She watched the two men feel each other out, Zev tentatively as was his way, allowing John to be the funny man. Once they’d had sufficient sake, Zev became ebullient, too, relaxing back into his chair, swirling the cup in his blunt fingers. They began to compete as to who had the most disgusting story to tell about the foods they were willing to eat. This developed into stories of traveling, and Zev talked about his “starving artist” period, when he’d lived in a squat in Brixton. The antinuke rallies in Trafalgar Square that he and his girlfriend treated like a day out, taking along a picnic of sausage rolls and cans of pale ale. John said he and Charlie had spent two months in London once, when they were first dating. He told them about the bedsit in Hammersmith where they’d had to feed the meter to keep the electricity on.

  “So, my friend,” John said, untucking the napkin he’d hung in his shirt collar and wiping his chin and mouth with it. His face was haggard, but his eyes were lit up. “You’re forty. . .what? Forty-one? A Peter Pan type, I guess?”

  “Youth is a crown of roses; old age, a crown of willows, as my mother used to say,” Zev answered. He had not caught the slight shift in John’s tone, the sharpening of his focus, but Katie noticed it right away, and she sat up taller. “They say students keep you young, but I suspect it’s the exact opposite. Teaching takes years off your life.” Zev was smiling, still having fun.

  “Teachers allowed to date their students these days?” John asked.

  “Dad, I wasn’t one of his students, not ever,” Katie said. “We met here in New York. I’d already been working a couple of years.”

  “Didn’t you first meet at college?” He reached out to touch her forearm. “I just feel really in the dark, hon.”

  He probably thought he was looking out for her, but she hadn’t asked him to do that. She had grown up since they’d last lived together like regular people; she’d become a woman who didn’t need to ask permission to make her own decisions.

  Zev looked from her father to Katie and back again, his brows snagged over his heavy nose. “Are you suggesting we’ve done something improper?”

  John poured himself more sake. “When I was in jail, I met a man with the name of Emmet. He was a sculptor, covered in tattoos. On his neck, right up to here”—he ran his finger under one ear, along his chin, to the other ear—“skulls and playing cards and girls riding missiles. He was near seventy years old. Boy, he loved those tattoos. Oiled them with some kind of
coconut potion he had to bargain for from the commissary. He didn’t think much of getting older either.”

  “So, Dad, okay . . .” Katie said, seeing the gap widen between her father’s perception and reality. He was embarrassingly off base. “Zev’s a professor, not a teacher. There’s one of his paintings in the apartment, did you notice? He’s very talented, really good. After his opening, his show at the Gaslight, there was tons of . . . of . . .” She petered out when she felt pressure on her leg; it was Zev, putting his hand on her thigh, asking her to please stop.

  “That painting with the hands?” John asked. “The big one—that’s one of yours?”

  “He just gave it to me today,” Katie said. “Isn’t it incredible?”

  “Yes, it is. Very interesting. She’s in a position of power, the girl, or she’s overshadowed by the others, the dark types?”

  “I think that’s probably the point, right? It’s ambiguous.”

  They sat looking at the food before agreeing to box it up and head back. When John asked for the bill, the waitress said it had already been paid, and Zev waved his hand, as though it meant nothing. He must have given them his credit card when he’d gone to the men’s room earlier.

  “You planning on staying over tonight, Dad?” Katie asked as they approached her place. A drifting sense of disorientation had overtaken her in the restaurant, a tilting of expectations, and she didn’t know anymore what she wanted from him. Earlier, watching the hot-air balloons, she had slipped back into the delicate fold of girlhood, of being his child. Now, there was a surge inside her pulling her away; she was no longer the same person she’d been back then.

  “Well, provided the Israeli’s not staying too and we have to wrestle for space, ha ha,” John said.

  “Please don’t call him that,” Katie said. “And Zev sleeps in my bed, obviously.”