by Adam Klein
‘Because I took his money.’ I notice her look over her shoulder at the large window in the living room, but the drapes are closed.
‘Shouldn’t we call the police?’ she asks.
‘I took the money,’ I say sharply, walking toward the bedroom. ‘And besides that, I already talked to the police.’ I remember calling the police station, an anonymous tip. I know Janine, and I know who did that to her.
I looked at her picture on the front page of the paper. I don’t know where they found a picture of her, so much hope in her eyes. But I knew they hadn’t pulled it from a yearbook, despite how young she looked. She always looked young; it was the only way she possessed a childhood, in her features. She left home when she was fourteen. She couldn’t get along with her mother, so she lived with punks and pimps. For a while, Bill and I let her sleep in our tiny room, but she never liked to stay somewhere for too long. The moment someone got close to her, she would imagine she was unwelcome. So she split. I used to ask her why she didn’t just call her mom and get off the streets, but any prolonged visit meant she’d have to see herself through another’s eyes. She preferred the distorting glass of being alone.
The picture must have been taken after she got clean. Perhaps her mother took it, capturing an image she hoped would be permanent. A clean daughter. Daughter with a chance in hell. I could suddenly put Janine’s chirpy voice – the one I’d heard in Sacramento – with this face. Not the face of the girl cowering in a hotel bathroom, telling me she was too high to jerk off the man waiting outside the door. No, that was the other face. This face had come together like a fresco, its broken pieces holding so that you could not imagine them disordered. They did not publish the pictures that were in the crime report. Anyone would have been convinced she was dead. Though I could have told Victor she’d hang on. It was her instinct.
If the police pursued me, I would say I left fearing Victor’s temper, his retribution. Though it was leaving him that first made me fear him. The leaving, and the strange appearance of hope in Janine’s picture; it scared me to think I’d never seen it in her before.
Hannah undresses in the bathroom. She emerges in a long flannel nightgown I’ve let her borrow. She looks pale against its black and gray checks. I’m already in bed, looking at my hands under the light. I have a book opened on my lap, but I can’t retain the words; they are many voices whispering. And my eyes shift to the window with its curtains tightly shut, but there is a thin seam of moonlight between them. I wait there, watching and listening to the water in the basin, and thinking of my father’s friends and the masks they wore to frighten me, and how they’d taken them off when they saw me step back, my eyes filling with tears. And I know that Victor would never be moved by tears. Not when it mattered.
When Hannah settles in beside me, I try avoiding the subject. ‘So, Ellen stayed in Burlington?’ She lies there staring at the ceiling. She is upset about Victor. I can see that. She has never slept with a knife under the mattress. But when she begins talking, I realize she is more concerned with the events she cannot defend herself from. It’s Ellen and Stefan who preoccupy her. If she can end it, finally once and for all, by telling it, she’ll end it tonight. But words won’t affect them. They’re deaf to her. I often think memories precede our lives; they lie in wait for us.
‘She stayed there for a couple of months and I heard nothing from her. Stefan, in the meantime, returned none of my calls. I didn’t want to see him, but I wanted to know if he’d heard from her. I started asking myself what we’d done, how it happened. I was racked with guilt. I was perplexed by my own actions, led by them. And the silence from the two of them echoed in me; I was that empty. I’d walk around feeling nothing. I can’t honestly say I’ve gotten the feelings back, either. I just sort of mimic people with feelings. That’s how I get by most of the time.
‘I thought: Maybe I did it out of jealousy; then I thought it was malice. I couldn’t decide; they both made me sick with myself. When I wasn’t totally hating myself, I’d convince myself that I’d had sex with Stefan as a desperate measure to bring Ellen back to me; now we would both know the depths of Stefan’s deceit, now that we’d both been wronged by him. And I’d let myself live with the fantasy: that Ellen would call and we’d both agree that he should have never come between us.
‘So when she did call, I think I expected that she’d come to the same conclusion. She was back in Iowa City, but her voice sounded very far off, and she was whispering as though someone might overhear her. And I asked if I could see her. She told me, “No,” very firmly. I could see there was no point in trying to change her mind. I consoled myself with the thought that she’d called me and that eventually she would come around. After a long silence, she asked if I wanted to apologize, and I admit I was taken off guard. I never expected her to confront me directly, and I was surprised she took the burden from me. I didn’t want to bring it up, but when she asked I said, “Yes, I do want to apologize. I’m sorry I let this happen.” I knew I could never tell her I was pregnant, but I could feel the baby in my sobbing; I cried with complete abandon, overtaken by it.’
Hannah looks over at me then, and the seam of light seems to separate her face, though both sides possess the same contraction of shadows. I can see in those shadows the pain of final decisions, of termination. ‘And then she hung up, and that was the last I heard from her.’
On the trip to Sacramento, during the training for the state, I called Janine for an apology. I wanted her to apologize for leaving me, for getting clean and leaving me to pretend I’d made a decision to keep using. Instead, I asked her to apologize for the play she’d written. And when she hung up on me, I realized I would never be able to ask her what I really needed to know. I needed her to tell me how she had skipped over the locked groove of addiction. I wanted to know what made her rush to her mother’s care, the absolution she would find in expensive facilities and dark church basements, where her story could mean something, and the door could swing both ways at last.
And I knew that I would use drugs again – even that evening – assuring myself it was the only way I could sit through the training seminar, where I was learning case management and where I’d heard the words ‘ethical distance’ for the first time. I knew exactly why Bill had made an exception of me, had kept no distance, followed none of the simple rules of his profession. Bill sought the absolution of likenesses; he saw in the damaged people he counseled some shared burden, and if it was not absolution, it was at least absolute. I’ve sought this comfort, and not just in Hannah, but in Victor too. I’ve sought the identification that comes not in the similarities of our stories, but how we hold them and don’t let them go.
Hannah turns toward me and asks if she should turn out the light on the nightstand. I tell her it’s fine, relieved by the bathroom light still illuminating the bedroom doorway.
She turns toward me and props herself on the pillow. ‘After Ellen’s call, I started to work with Gina and Rachel. I thought I could make some money quickly and that I’d take care of the baby and eventually I could move out of town, maybe go back to Sioux City. I knew I could never tell Ellen about any of it. I knew on the deepest level I never wanted the baby. Of course, Ellen would have thought me a monster if I told her how I felt. I felt humiliated by the pregnancy, disgusted by it. I couldn’t tell Stefan about it, either. I didn’t imagine I’d hear from them again, and sometimes I would go up into the tractor and just think about the irony of it: how I’d interposed myself between the two of them, and how this child was really theirs. And I would get so tired, replaying the whole thing in my mind and thinking about how this baby was just one of the many secrets I carried, and how maybe I could take the baby somewhere and there would be no consequences, because that’s what we were – the consequences.
‘Sometimes my mind would go back to them when I was working at Gina’s, and I wondered if they would get back together, and whether Ellen would have a baby too, and whether he’d divorce his wife. Becaus
e I thought: Even if I disappear, they’ll have their own things to work out. Though, at that time, I somehow imagined that they would make it work. They seemed destined for each other. That’s why I felt it was fated to turn out so bad for me. I tried to stop the inevitable. I didn’t imagine what would happen to them. Or that I’d be the lucky one.’ She laughs weakly, then puts her hands over her face.
6
For years I would wake up with the chalkiness of the stones I carried still on my fingertips. I took them from the rough embankment of the canal and scraped them along the sidewalk in front of our house, and they were powdery stones as though they’d been pulverized and reconstructed. And for years they were the strongest memory I carried from my childhood, and even now I feel them, after a dream, on the tips of my fingers.
When Gina calls, I’ve just woken from the dream, its disturbing residue. Hannah practically jumps from the bed; it’s just before 8 A.M., but I can see she’s anxious to get dressed and get out. Neither of us slept well. Even King seemed uneasy, moving around the living room.
‘I’m going to shower real quick,’ she announces, and heads toward the bathroom. Gina simultaneously says, ‘Don’t forget to confirm your flight tomorrow.’ She sounds oddly cheerful, as though she were sending me off to camp.
I keep myself from asking, Why am I going to Florida? The trip is suddenly ill-timed. Or perhaps perfectly timed. I was up all night in a state of dread. I feel like I’ve been given a choice of tragedies, obsessing over Victor or collecting my mother’s remains. And I’m still angry at her; I wonder why her ashes can’t wait. I try to keep my resentment from showing; I’ll do what Hannah does – mimic appropriate responses and feelings. After all, my mother is dead. There’s no point in anger now.
‘Hannah’s in the shower,’ I tell Gina after she asks about the other voice she’s just heard.
‘She stayed over?’ I notice the tinge of slyness in her inquiry. Gina is always entertaining the thought that I’m keeping my lesbianism from her, that the moment I’m alone with another woman we tear each other’s clothes off and make up for lost time. I tell her about the car in the driveway and realize it’s not hard to make it sound sinister even without mentioning Victor. ‘That’s why I asked her to stay,’ I say informatively.
‘Is she away from the phone? Can I tell you something?’
‘She’s in the shower.’
I expect something lewd. Gina’s full of coarse revelations.
‘I know you’ve gotten really close to her, but I think you should know that she’s maybe more troubled than you think.’ I’m surprised by how seriously she says this. It’s a seriousness I rarely, hear in her, and I wonder if she’s priming me for a joke.
I know how troubled she is. We had to have something in common.’
She dismisses my comment. ‘Did she tell you she was pregnant?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And this is beginning to feel distinctly like gossip.’
‘Did she tell you what she did?’
‘She had an abortion. I know you’re not going to condemn her for that.’
‘Did she tell you she had an abortion?’
‘I can’t talk about this. Yes, I think so.’
‘She had the baby, Carrie. By the way, it’s not gossip. This is your job, isn’t it? I thought you talked about these things.’ She resents my being a case manager. I want to remind her that it’s not clinical psychology. It’s government service, food stamps for the soul.
‘She’s not my client anymore. Anyway, what happened after she had the baby?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. But Rachel and I noticed she didn’t have the baby when she checked herself into the psych hospital. I wonder if you shouldn’t find out what she did with him?’
‘How do you know she even had the baby?’
‘Well, now I really get to impress you. She had him here. She wouldn’t let us call a doctor. She insisted we not say a word to anyone about it. So you see, I feel partially responsible. When you’ve taken someone’s baby head first out of their body, you don’t just suddenly forget they had one.’
‘What are you trying to say, then?’
‘I think the worst.’
‘You think she killed him?’
She’s silent for a moment. ‘I think so.’
‘That’s too strange,’ I say. I hear my own train of thought die out. It dawns on me that it might not be strange, however awful. And I begin to wonder if it’s the baby and not Ellen that she can’t forget.
‘Listen,’ Gina says. ‘She’ll probably tell you, anyway. She probably needs to talk to someone about it. But if she tells you, I need you to let me know. Promise you’ll tell me. Promise.’
When Hannah comes out of the shower, I hand her a large, fresh towel. When I hand it to her, I wonder if I’m not asking her to cover up. On some level, it’s too much to know about her, too much to presume. I feel pity and an odd sense of betrayal. I wonder if she simply hasn’t gotten around to this part of the story; maybe it comes after Ellen’s death. Maybe there’s something she hasn’t told me about that too. It’s funny when you find a breach in someone’s character; a missing detail can become their strongest feature.
I take King out behind the cottage while Hannah dries her hair. I’m tired of living in fear, I think as I unbolt the door. Tired of precaution. She asked if I want to go out for breakfast with her, and since Gina’s helped with all the packing there’s really nothing for me to do before tomorrow’s flight. I sense Hannah’s asked me because she doesn’t want me to stay here alone. She doesn’t want to be here either. I don’t blame her. Perhaps there couldn’t be a better time to scatter my mother’s ashes. Leave an empty house for Vic.
After the snowfall, the pond is virtually indiscernible. I stand close to the back door, fearful in a way that’s both familiar and new. The fear is compounded by the fact that I no longer know Victor, or rather that he no longer knows me. I suspect he’s the same. That’s why he’s come. But I fear I have no sway over him now. I wouldn’t know how to fake the love I once felt for him, can hardly imagine what I called love in those days. There’d be no talking him down, now. He’s learned he doesn’t need me and cannot trust me. There’d be no recognition. He’d put me down like a dog that turns against its master.
I call King inside and lock the back door. It’s Sunday and usually quiet downtown, a good day to look in the windows without buying. That’s what I’ll do today, look into the windows. I’ll scan the reflections in case anyone’s standing behind me. I won’t be surprised by the surfacing of masks in the glass. I know I can’t ask Hannah to stay with me; I’ve already pushed her too far. I worry she might be angry with me about last night, suddenly asked to be my protector. I sit down on the couch, waiting for her to gather her things.
‘I’ll be right there,’ she hollers from the bathroom.
Once she comes out, we drive into town and park. We discuss breakfast unenthusiastically. ‘Do you mind if I say good-bye to you here?’ she asks. ‘I feel antsy, like I need to get home.’
‘That’s fine,’ I tell her. ‘I’m sorry about last night. I got paranoid, and I think I made it impossible for you not to stay over. But I’m really grateful for the company. I needed it.’
I think you should stay with me tonight,’ she says. ‘Don’t stay there alone.’
‘It’s my home, Hannah. I can’t let my fears get the best of me. Someone pulled up and drove off. It’s more likely that it was just someone who got lost. No one knows where I live.’ I reach over and grab her hand. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. If I get spooked, I’ll head over to your place tonight.’
She gives me a hard look. ‘I hope you’ve convinced yourself that there’s nothing to worry about. You haven’t convinced me.’ She looks away from me for a moment. ‘I’m sure your trip will be good for you. Remember to call me as soon as you get back. If anything happens out of the ordinary, just come over.’ She hugs me and steps out of the car.
I begi
n to amble my way toward the cluster of streets that constitute the main shopping area, thinking that I’ll maybe pick up a frame for the photograph I plan on giving my grandmother. I notice a figure sitting alone on one of the benches, his hands brushing his arms to keep warm. It’s the newspaper boy who is rumored to be retarded as a result of his family’s incest. This could be lies. No one I know has ever spoken to him. He sits there silently rocking in the cold, his tongue involuntarily appearing from the side of his mouth. I want to ask him why he’s sitting there, and if he needs a coat.
I think of how often I saw people in need in San Francisco, how walking past them made me feel I had a toughened skin around my heart. To consider helping someone beyond offering them a couple of coins would be a kind of madness. You learn your limits, don’t pick up strays. You might be killed, robbed. Most likely, you’ll encounter the disappointment inherent in those situations: the unshakable habits and patterns of someone acclimated to a life of begging, destitution. Don’t try to alter the unalterable. Life is terrible. Most people never see above despair. But the boy is engaged in his rocking. He seems transported by the rhythm of his bobbing torso, the sounds of his hands running over his windbreaker.
I stop, standing far enough away so he doesn’t notice me, and pretend to be looking elsewhere. I wonder if he’ll be offended if I offer to buy him a coat. This is crazy, I tell myself. I can’t fix him, can’t fix anyone. I pull my hat down around my ears. It’s too cold for him to be here alone. I start to advance toward him. What if I scare him? What if his parents are nearby and think I’m abducting him. He’s probably eighteen, though he looks like a child. Or at least I see him as a child.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
He looks up, doesn’t respond. He goes back to rocking, but faster this time.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask again. No pressure behind it.
