Maureen nods and lays the cassette on the table between them. “Here it is, in his own words.”
The woman studies the tape down the length of her nose but makes no move to pick it up. “Play it for me.”
“Now?” Maureen asks, obviously surprised.
“Just the part where he propositions her, and a little bit before.”
“It might be better if you listened to it when you’re alone,” Natalie suggests.
“I’ll decide that,” the woman snaps. Her hard gaze and the tight set of her subtly colored lips proclaim her total lack of interest in what Natalie thinks.
Which makes it okay with Natalie to play the tape. She’s never listened to herself on one of these before, and she’s not anxious to start. When she leaves a sting. that’s lt. she wants to forget about it. But if Mrs. Phil here is going to treat her like some kind of back alley whore, then, fine, she can show her just what a louse her husband is.
She slides the tape back into the player and rewinds it about a quarter of the way, looking for a good place to begin. “The sound’s pretty good on these things. “ Maureen explains while Natalie searches. “There’s a mike built into her handbag. Can’t see it unless you really know to look for it.”
Phil ‘s wife nods and says nothing. She’s staring at the tape, listening to little snippets of her husband’s voice as Natalie cruises back and forth through the recording. When Natalie finds the part she’s looking for, she hits play and Phil, tinny but clear, asks, “You’re into piercing?”
It bothers Natalie to hear his voice even more than her own. There’s something in it she didn’t hear before, almost like a sadness. That’s why you should never listen to these things. You start inventing the person beneath the jerk and next time you can’t do your job properly, because you’re thinking that maybe the dirtball isn’t such a dirtball after all, that maybe he’s got reasons for acting the way he does and that maybe what you’re doing isn’t right because you’re branding him a certain way and maybe he isn’t just that.
And Natalie won’t accept that. She wants to have no sympathy for the liars and the frauds. The charlatans bring whatever unpleasant fate they suffer upon themselves, and it’s rare they suffer at all.
Phil’s wife stares impassively at the cassette, saying and revealing nothing, until there’s only the whooshing sound of blank tape and Natalie punches stop.
When the woman looks up, there is a moist sparkling in the corners of her eyes.
“You weren’t supposed to come on to him,” she says in a hard whisper.
Natalie is taken aback. ‘“I didn’t,” she exclaims, which Maureen echoes.
“When he asked you about the piercing,” the woman says angrily, “and you told him wouldn’t you like to know, what do you call that?”
“Banter,” Natalie answers. “Bar talk. It’s how you deflect guys without making them angry. Your husband asked me to sleep with him, not the other way around. All I did was ask him what he had in mind.”
“You’re upset,” Maureen interjects. “I don’t blame you. But Natalie didn’t do anything wrong here.”
Phil’s wife stares at her, then drops her head. “You’re right” she sighs.
Maureen tries to say something consoling but the woman just shakes her head and raises her hand to indicate she doesn’t want to hear it. A minute passes, it seems like more, and then she looks up at Natalie. Her eyes are dry and focused.
“He didn’t even ask if you’d been tested, did he?” she asks.
Natalie shakes her head. No, he didn’t.
“So I probably need to be tested then, don’t I?”
Natalie tells her yes. She probably does.
“Christ almighty, what a pig.” Abruptly, the woman stands and snatches the tape up off the table where Natalie has left it. She lifts an elegant wool coat from the back of a nearby chair and drapes it over her shoulders. “My husband and I have never discussed a divorce,” she says. “I guess we will now.” She marches out of the room without saying goodbye.
Great feeling, breaking up a marriage. Natalie and Maureen walk in silence around the corner to the parking garage and wait in the little elevator alcove where the panhandlers go to catch a warm nap and sometimes to piss. The air is sharp with the smell of ammonia.
Natalie punches the up button. ‘‘I’m never doing this again,” she says.
Maureen lights a cigarette and blows smoke on the No Smoking sign.
“Don’t blame you. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve seen worse. She took it fairly well, all things considered.”
All things considered. Natalie wonders what those things are, and whether
she has a right to consider them. “She never did introduce herself.”
“Her name is Abby Wible. Mrs. Phil Wible, at least for now. You up for a drink?”
“No. thanks. I have to go check on Emily.” And then. of course. there’s the cemetery.
Maureen doesn’t push. The elevator doors slide open. they step inside, and Natalie jabs four. The button doesn’t light but the doors eventually close and the elevator grinds slowly upward.
“Lunch tomorrow?” Maureen suggests as they emerge from the darkened cubicle.
“Sure.” Natalie smiles knowingly. “I guess I’m out of a job. aren’t I?”
Maureen is her friend. but she has a business to manage. “Pretty tough to play undercover when your photo’s going to be all over the news.”
Natalie says nothing. The news. Right. She has had her fifteen minutes already, more than enough for a lifetime, but that’s only a guaranteed minimum. Nowhere is it written that you can’t be subjected to a second round, and that’s what she has to look forward to now, a second round of hell.
2
Daddy Dearest
Awakened by laughter, Tethys slowly props herself up on one arm, rests a minute, then struggles to her feet. A glass of water has been left by her bedside, and she hadn’t even remembered to ask. How fortunate she is to be blessed with such thoughtful and attentive children.
She pops a couple of the little yellow pills that she keeps with her at all times now and whispers a short prayer that they will kick in soon. The pain is noticeably worse than it was a week ago, which means the disease is gaining on her rapidly.
Any time now, the doctors say.
At last, she is ready to accept that. it has been difficult despite her faith, more difficult than she ever thought it might be. But now, the journey they have been awaiting for so long is finally about to begin, and soon she will travel beyond the reach of pain and illness, leaving those afflictions to the timid souls who will forever see them as an inescapable part of the human experience.
Poor fools. They are so much prisoners of their own minds.
She shuffles out into the hallway and past the bedrooms where the others are preparing. They want to help her when they see that she’s awake, but she sends them back to their tasks. Their enthusiasm uplifts her. The snapping of suitcase latches, the expectant tittering, the scribbling of pencils on note paper, the breathless speculating about what their new home will be like—their excitement fills the air, and she inhales it, growing lighter as she does.
She remembers how, in a very different phase of her existence, the biological mother phase, she took her young children to Disney World, and this was how they behaved the night before their trip, barely able to contain themselves, anticipation churning them into a froth of almost pure glee.
And that was just for an amusement park. This, well, not even Disney could imagine the wonders of where they are going.
She wanders toward the family room, where Peter is dumping a load of suitcases onto the floor and Sara is standing watch, clipboard in hand. “Is everything out of the back room yet?” Sara asks.
“Not yet,” Peter answers. “Should I do that now?”
“Well, gee, I don’t know, maybe you should wait until the portal closes.”
“Fine, fine.”
Tethys smi
les. Peter and Sara quibble constantly, but two more loyal lieutenants she could never find. A good thing, too. She will need to rely on that.
They have important work ahead.
“Are you two fighting again?” she asks.
The two cast sheepish glances her way, the way children would, good children. “I told you not to give her that clipboard,” Peter jokes, “makes her impossible.”
“Get going, or I’ll show you impossible,” Sara says, brandishing the clipboard.
“Jawohl, mein Fuhrer.” Peter raises his arm in mock salute and takes off at a trot down the hallway.
Sara watches him go. “Sheesh, nothing’s easy.” She turns to Tethys. “How are you feeling? I left you some water.”
“I thought it might have been you,” Tethys replies. “Thank you. I’ll be OK.” But her body is making a liar of her. so she crosses over to the couch and sits down. “Is everything in order?”
Sara consults the clipboard. “Just as you wanted.”
“The van?”
“All set. Our bodies won’t betray us.”
“Good.” Suddenly there is an eruption in her chest, like a volcano bursting open. searing and angry. She clutches a wad of tissue, holding it over her mouth until the coughing subsides. The wad pulls away damp with viscous blood.
It will be easier for her than for the others, this transition. Her body has already betrayed her.
* * *
The back bedroom is where they have been keeping many of the supplies they need for the trip. It is also where the little girl sleeps, in among the boxes and paper bags. Peter knocks on the door, which he always does when he is about to enter her room, even though knocking is generally considered anathema in the house. In fact, it really isn’t “her” room; no one has their own room here. Tethys says privacy breeds divisions and discontent, so everything in the house is out in the open, available for all to see and, if they wish, partake in.
But it’s not the same with the girl. There is something about her that makes Peter want to treat her differently, to protect her maybe, which he knows can be dangerous. Not that he’s worried—he knows how to keep his feelings in check.
He just feels sorry for her, that’s all. and wants her to be happy. No harm in that.
“Come in.”
It’s the father’s voice, a bit on the peevish side. As always. Roger—he insists on his full name, never permitting “Rog” or any other form of familiarity—is an ill-tempered stick of a man; nothing much to him, as far as Peter is concerned, except attitude and ambition. He’s especially tough on his daughter, rides her constantly when he isn’t ignoring her, so when Peter nudges open the door he isn’t surprised to find him glowering at her. They are sitting on her bed, facing each other, neither of them showing the least hint of the joy present elsewhere in the house. Her lower lip is trembling, and it’s obvious she’s been crying.
Peter tries not to notice. Roger doesn’t like it when she weeps in front of others—it embarrasses him. “Just getting the rest of the stuff,” Peter declares.
The girl’s imploring gaze remains fixed on her father. “But why can’t we go together?” she asks.
“Because that’s not how it works,” Roger insists, “I’ve explained that.”
Exasperated, he turns to Peter. “How about you explain it to her? I’m just not getting through.”
Washing his hands of her, which is typical. A year Roger has been with them, and in all that time he hasn’t once even mentioned that he has a daughter. That isn’t entirely unusual, of course. They all have people they are leaving behind, lives they are spinning off into the past; they are here because they are members of a breed driven to look ahead, toward something different and exciting, not back. This is not an adventure for the nostalgic.
But it still comes out, what and whom you loved, in conversations over meals, in what you say at prayers, in the solace you seek from others. The names of the people you wish you didn’t have to leave behind. The pain of connections broken and loves lost. The unsettling strength of fond memories.
That’s why Tethys had them write the letters, to put those feelings behind them once and for all.
Peter thinks there are two types of pioneers: those who are courageous and strong enough to confront and vanquish those feelings, and those who simply don’t have them.
He always took Roger for one of the latter, because he never spoke of anyone he regretted leaving behind, anyone he missed. There was that one woman who came to see him a few times, but he always acted like she was something he wanted to flick off his finger. And then last week, out of the blue, he showed up with his daughter, said she wanted to be with him, although you couldn’t tell it to look at her, and that he couldn’t leave without her. Tethys was so happy you would have thought it was her own long-lost child he had brought home. All very nice.
But he doesn’t really care for his daughter. He never spends time with her, never has much to say to her, seems perpetually grouchy about the fact of her presence. Except when Tethys is around, of course, and then he’s the model papa. The rest of the time, though, it’s daddy dearest.
“I think your daughter wants to hear it from you,” Peter says.
Roger’s eyes narrow. “She’s already heard it from me, a dozen times.”
And it’s obvious one more time won’t help, so Peter doesn’t even bother.
“Tethys says it has to be this way, honey,” he tells her softly. “That’s all that matters. You trust Tethys, don’t you?”
Selena nods in the vacant way people do when they’re not really listening. “But I’m scared, Daddy,” she says. Even Peter can hear it’s not a statement but a plea.
Which her father ignores. “Not Daddy,” he corrects, “Roger. That’s how you’ll know me when we cross over—we’ll all be equals then. Might as well get used to it now. Come on, practice.” The girl looks to Peter for help, but there isn’t much he can do. “Now,” Roger insists, glancing up in a way that suggests how overly conscious he is of Peter’s presence.
“Roger,” she whimpers.
Her father beams triumphantly. “Better.” He sweeps what is left of his graying hair across his shiny, thin man’s crown. “Stop hanging on to the way things used to be. That’s all behind us. Forgotten, done. We belong to the future now.”
Sara’s loud voice booms down the hallway and fills the little room. “It’s time, people,” she shouts. “This is it. Let’s saddle up!”
A series of cheers erupts from the other rooms. Roger, a thin smile slicing across his narrow face like a paper cut, leaps to his feet. Grabbing a duffel bag off the bed, he leans over and quickly pecks his daughter on the cheek, as if he’s just running out for a loaf of bread. “I’ll see you when we get there,” he says.
“Be brave.”
She lifts her arms, the way you would if you were expecting a hug, or begging for one. “No, Daddy, wait!”
But he has already turned away and, eyes ablaze with anticipation, brushes past Peter on his way out the door. His daughter stares after him, gazing at the empty space that he has just punched through without so much as a backward glance. “I wanted to say good-bye,” she says, not so much to Peter as to the air.
Peter slings a backpack over his shoulder and lifts the girl from the bed, holding her in his arms. “It’ll be okay. I promise,” he whispers, close to her ear. He carries her through the house and out the front door to where the others are already climbing in eager silence into a pair of nondescript white cargo vans.
Their van is on the right—Roger has already disappeared into the van on the left.
When the others have all taken their places in the back. Peter opens the passenger side door and gently lowers the girl into the front seat.
“Do up your seatbelt. I’ll be right back,” he says. “You’ll be okay?”
She nods gamely, but a sob escapes anyway. “He didn’t even hug me.”
Peter wipes a tear from her face. “Don’t worry, you
’ll see him again soon.”
3
That Was All A Long Time Ago
Emily is asleep in front of the television when Natalie comes in. This is her aunt’s favorite spot, in the battered old La-Z-Boy, and she’s sitting there, feet up, head tilted to one side, lightly snoring. Resting precariously on the chair’s right arm, next to an empty highball that Natalie knows would smell of gin if she sniffed it, is the silver saucer her aunt uses as an ashtray, a wedding present from some forgotten member of her late husband’s family. It’s full of butts and spent ash, and there’s ash strewn around it, and ancient burn holes in the green fabric of the chair. Thank God no new ones, Natalie thinks. But she knows this is how her aunt intends to die: alone, pass-out drunk, Court TV flickering in the background, preferably right after a major verdict has been brought in and justice has been served or dealt another obscene blow, doesn’t matter, just so the thing’s resolved. And hopefully the smoke will take her before the fire, consuming her, drags her back into consciousness for the agonizing finale. which Natalie prefers not to think about.
She switches off the television, and her aunt stirs. When Natalie was still very young her father took her butterfly hunting in a meadow near his hunting lodge, and she captured three. As she trapped each one, bright yellow wings flapping wildly inside the filmy white net, her father would gently cup it between his hands and slip it into a jar full of cotton balls soggy with ether. He said it would make them sleep, just sleep, but later he pinned them to a piece of cardboard and Natalie cried because she knew. This is what Emily’s eyelids remind her of as they flutter slowly open, of a butterfly’s wings after it has been gassed, when the ether is shackling its senses and making it earthbound.
Ring of Years Page 2
