“Hugh wants us to move to India for a while.”
“To get you away from Jack?”
“No,” she laughs. “I don’t think so. He just wants to live abroad. Have an adventurous life.”
“Do you want to go?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” I ask even though I know the answer.
Edie looks at me and lies: “Oh, you know, air pollution. Increased rates of asthma and childhood cancers.”
I don’t press her. We’re delicate with each other. How long has she been sitting on that poem before she showed it to me? She’s so excited it exists that I don’t think she has absorbed what it was saying.
Rarely. Edie. If it was even her, she thinks about us Ra-re-ly.
“When I first moved here,” Edie says, “I’d go on these epically long walks at night when I couldn’t sleep.”
I think of the walks we used to take with Dad.
“Most nights, I’d pass this pet store on Sunset and I’d see a man sitting inside, in the dark, with birds perched on his shoulders and legs.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. I could only see his outline. Bald, I think? Not very big. I was so lonely. He was like my loneliness totem.”
We stop at the overlook, glance down at the moonlit city. Edie pulls a fig off the tree we’re standing under and pops it in her mouth.
“Loneliness blows through me. The whistle of an empty house,” I say.
“Yes. Exactly,” she says, throwing the stem into the grass. “Where’s that from?”
“One of Dad’s books.”
She turns to look at me. “Have you seen him since the trial?”
“I tried to visit him once, actually, but she was there. She wouldn’t let me see him.”
“She’s always there. That deranged cunt. You know when I visited them after Thomas was born, she kicked me out of the house. She said I was going to hurt the baby. Like I would ever… And of course Dennis just went along with it.”
“He was doing what he had to do, I guess.” It comes out acerbic, but isn’t it true? He got his fresh start. For a few years at least. I look up at the moon through the lens of my camera. It looks brighter and sharper because there’s no light pollution. I can see its craters.
“What he had to do…?” Edie says, pulling the camera away from my face. She wants me to go places I’m not interested in going.
“I know you want me to be outraged,” I say.
“I don’t want you to be anything,” she says disingenuously. “I want you to be honest. You talk about it to Marie Claire, but not to me.”
I shrug. I know this hurts her feelings, but I can’t talk about it with her. She wants me to see my relationship with Dad the way she does, stripped of any magic. She wants me to see myself as his victim. She thinks admitting this would set me free. There’s no use arguing with her because it just makes her angry.
“Okay,” Edie says, lifting up her hands. She’ll drop it for now. I wrap my arm around her shoulders. Kiss her temple. We walk up the hill in silence.
We both hear the thudding footsteps at the same time. A figure rounds the corner and runs past us down the hill.
“Hey!” Edie calls out but the person doesn’t stop. On impulse, I snap a picture. The bright flash goes off and for a moment I can make out an adult with a child’s backpack. Was he being chased? By a person? By coyotes? And then, I’m blind.
I blink, walk, blink, walk into a parked car. “Shit.”
I wait for the stars to pass.
“Hey!” I hear Edie shout down the hill. No answer.
“Weird,” she says, taking my hand.
We walk back to the house, slightly dazed. In the living room, Hugh is on his knees in front of the fireplace, stacking wood. The drunk is playing the piano. He’s not bad, actually. Hugh strikes a match on the grate and I feel it inside my spine. I step back quickly, bang my legs on the rocking horse I gave them. It creaks as it swings back and forth.
“Are you all right?” Paul asks from the corner.
“Sure.” I sit down next to him, in the chair farthest from the fire. The room glows orange. Edie is on the floor by Hugh, stretching her hands out to the flame.
The drunk starts a new song. It’s ragtime. Fast fingers. He must be a professional musician. On the high notes, he gets ambitious, leans too far and almost topples, rights himself slowly and keeps playing.
“Mae, you should sing something,” Edie says. “She’s very good,” she tells Hugh.
“Oh yeah?” He turns to look at me.
“I can’t,” I say, focusing and unfocusing the camera on the rug. “The smoke damaged my lungs.”
“That’s horseshit,” Edie says.
“Why would I lie about it?”
“Because you don’t want to sing.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Fine,” Edie says. “I’ll sing.” This is a threat. As a kid she was so tone deaf she wasn’t allowed to sing in the car.
She gets up and sings the entire jingle from the Personal Injury Law Firm commercials we used to mock as kids over the ragtime song the drunk is playing.
“But I’ve been in-jured on the job,” she drawls. “How’m I gonna find a law-yer to get me the settlement that I de-serve?”
I look at her.
“I sa-aid,” she says, dancing over to me, “how’m I gonna find a law-yer to get me the settlement that I de-serve?”
“Why, it’s just as easy as picking up the phone!” I finally say. She pulls me up from the chair and we dance to the piano music.
When the song’s over, I laugh and clap. I wind easily. I sit down. I can feel Paul staring at me.
The drunk starts another song, then gets up abruptly and staggers out of the room. Edie continues dancing by herself, laughing.
“Edie,” Hugh says and pulls her down carefully into his lap. “Edie,” he says, “settle down.” They kiss. I close my eyes again and listen to the sound of the logs burning and my sister kissing her husband and my assistant breathing through his mouth. And then I hear it. A knock. A knock on the front door.
I open my eyes. Did I imagine that?
“I think I’m feeling better,” Paul announces.
Another knock. This time more definite. Edie hears it too.
“I got it,” Edie says, standing up and smoothing her skirt.
“If it’s people looking for candles, there’re more in the hall closet,” Hugh calls after her.
Edie doesn’t seem to have heard him. From where I’m sitting, I can see her profile. She pauses with her hand on the doorknob and for a moment she looks 16 again. Her face is open and hopeful. And there, inside of me, stirs that ancient feeling of dread that I thought had been extinguished years ago.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Eric and Eliza for publishing this book. Thank you to Bill Clegg, whose sharp editorial eye made the book better.
Thank you to Washington University’s MFA program and the Olin Fellowship program, and particularly to Kathryn Davis who supported my writing and read early versions of this book.
Thank you to the Elizabeth George Foundation for its generous grant and support that allowed me to write for a year and pay for childcare.
Thank you to the Ucross Foundation, where I began writing the book, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, where I began re-writing the book, and Playa where I finished it.
Thank you also to Jen and Jordan Monroe who gave me a little residency in Catalina Island, to Seth Archer and Amber Caron for our Utah retreat.
Thanks to the Wisconsin Archives—the research that I did there on the Civil Rights Movement helped inform the book, particularly Ann Carter’s character.
Thank you to all my friends who read this book and helped get it published—Michael Almereyda, Colin Bassett, Amber Caron, Anton DiSclafani, Randi Ewing, Sara Finnerty, Matt Grice, Anne-Marie Kinney, Zach Lazar, Mimi Lipson, Lisa Locascio, Betsy Medvedovsky, Emily McLaughli
n, Emily Robbins, Maura Roosevelt, Randi Shapiro, J Ryan Stradal and Andrew Wonder. And thank you especially to Lia Silver, Jordan Jacks and Miriam Simun—who have read this book a million times each.
Thank you to Diana Bartlett and Jesse Hutchison for their medical advice.
Thank you to my parents who are nothing like Marianne and Dennis, and to my brother, Matthew Shifrin, my unsolicited copyeditor extraordinaire, and to my daughter, Fais.
And most of all, thank you to David, who supported me through this whole exciting and difficult process. I love you very, very much.
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The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish Page 24
