Through sheer bull-headedness, he was making progress. The documentary was gaining a momentum of its own.
Ninety finished minutes on tape were a long haul, boiled down from three days of shooting, and the pile of stock footage Brenna had also handed off. Like she said, everything that he needed was there. It just kept morphing as he distilled ideas. On top of that, he had research materials, taped interviews with stateside expert sources, and pre-war stock shots to track down, in order to show before-and-after. Meanwhile, during the day, he was at his office managing his staff and fielding calls from independent producers working on other projects that were also in the pipeline.
The workload was staggering.
But he had a career to salvage. A woman to get over.
And he had to do it while he was immersed in her work. She was inextricably entwined in his story, her spirit embodied in her pictures. Her actions—their actions together—were at the very core of the experience he needed to relate in the script. Even if he could put her out of his mind, he couldn’t.
He jotted notes on the files he was using, closed the video editing program, and shut down his machine. Taking his used coffee cup and empty sandwich plate with him, he plodded downstairs and loaded them into the dishwasher.
He leaned against the kitchen counter, crossed one ankle over the other. The house was silent, the walls hard slates that reverberated loneliness. It felt as lifeless as it had after Aya and Joseph Alden died.
Even in her depressed state, Brenna had added to his life. She’d stirred him, wrenched him out of his rut, made his heart come awake. She’d given him someone to love, a way to express a long-dormant aspect of himself. While she had been with him he’d been able to envision himself as a whole man again. Now, he just ached—day and night, body, mind, and spirit.
He sighed. Once again, he needed to rebuild his life. But what life could he possibly lead, that compensated for the fact that Brenna and four children had paid for it?
Walking briskly, as was his New Yorker habit, James came off the MTA at the Christopher Street/Sheridan Square stop onto Seventh Avenue and crossed the intersection to the small, pie-shaped park along Christopher Street on his way home. He was tired after a long day of clinic appointments and a brief after-hours confab with his medical staff.
He loved his Village neighborhood for its quirky, pre-grid layout, and as he passed the Stonewall Inn, he thought of its unique place in lesbian and gay liberation. Before June 27, 1969, city police routinely rounded up homosexuals in paddy wagons and treated them like criminals for the simple act of congregating in a social space. On that date, however, the community—led by diesel dykes and drag queens socializing at the Inn—turned on the cops and claimed the right to live their own lives.
He wished Brenna would show that same determination for self-preservation. She was profoundly dispirited. Since he’d brought her home, her despondency had deepened. She scarcely talked. The weight she had gained at Daniel’s had fallen off. Nothing mattered to her. Even Gary hadn’t been able to buoy her.
He made the turn onto his narrow, car’s-width side street, almost home.
“James!” Gary’s voice carried up the block to him. He was dressed in fresh scrubs, headed for a seven-to-seven shift at the inpatient unit at the clinic. He would have just left Brenna, knowing James would arrive in only a couple of minutes.
“Hey, hon,” James said, greeting him with a quick kiss. “How is she?”
“Pretty looped, I’d say. Making inroads on that decanter of bourbon she’s been contemplating all week.”
“Great. Alcohol and anti-depressants.”
“I know. I told her.”
“Did you take the booze away?”
Gary shook his head. “She growled. This calls for someone with sharper fangs than mine, handsome. I draw the line at wrestling with your sister.”
James rubbed his temple. How the hell was he going to deal with this?
Gary glanced at his watch. “I’m going to be late. Good luck.”
James turned homeward.
As the old freight elevator in the converted warehouse lumbered slowly upwards to his loft apartment, he heard the soundtrack from Black Hawk Down drifting out of his apartment. Brenna had discovered the CD in Gary’s collection and had been playing it ever since. The music was astonishing, shifting between mournful dirges and the heart-thumping beat of predatory battle sequences. He could see how it reflected her emotions.
Keys jingling, he turned the locks and swung the door open. He winced. His neighbors were tolerant, but at these decibels, they’d eventually come knocking.
Brenna was sitting on the couch, back turned to him, seemingly impervious to the music crashing over her.
He tossed his house keys onto the table by the door, and crossed the refurbished plank floor to the living area. He didn’t even try to talk. Pointless, with the music so loud. He went around the couch, saw her unfocused gaze, the tumbler of bourbon in her hands, the half-empty decanter on the side table.
Her eyes registered no surprise at seeing him. He picked up the remote for the stereo and turned down the volume. Tipping his head at the decanter, he said: “I just filled that.”
She toasted him, took a swallow of the amber liquid. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to buy the refills.”
“Booze and meds, Brenna?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “I can quit the pills any time.”
Oh, sure. Withdrawal on top of everything else. You didn’t just abruptly stop taking anti-depressants.
He leaned across her to take her glass.
She pulled it away. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
He halted. Gary had been right. This was a contest that would end in a tangle. If he was going to restrain her, it would be to get her into a psych ward with a 24-hour suicide watch. He backed off. Moved away before he was tempted to call for a set of burly attendants with a straightjacket.
The elegy on the stereo ended and the music segued to the thwap of chopper rotors beating the sky. A rising heartbeat, faint at first, growing in intensity, coming nearer.
He scrubbed his face with his hand. “You know what, Brenna? This won’t do. You’re going to have to find a way to live with what happened in Kavsak that doesn’t involve self-destruction.”
She sat back, laid an arm out across the back of the sofa and insolently crossed one knee over the other. “Perhaps you have some tips? A few little pointers you care to share?”
A zing escaped the speakers like a sharpening steel sliding up the blade of a bayonet.
Before he could speak, she held her hand up to cut him off. “But first—so we’re sure we understand each other—maybe you could try to imagine…” Her voice turned hard, and she started pelting him with it like stones. “Try. To imagine. How you’d feel if you turned your back on four little kids and walked out of that apartment. Picture yourself holding a little girl who snuggled against your breast and trusted you to take care of her. And you turned your back.”
An ominous note rose. The pulsating percussion gained momentum.
She thumped her glass on the table. Shot to her feet. Glared at him. “Having a little trouble with this, bro?” She paced agitatedly in front of him, spun, and snapped her fingers. “I know! Say it was me. Me and Gary. And a madman has his gun pointed at us and he can’t make up his mind which one of us to shoot—”
The thumping beat of predatory battle rose into the foreground. Dark chords. Heavy. Raw. Predator versus prey. Chaser, chased. Gaining speed.
“Take me, you say. Oh, but I don’t want you, he says. You get on your knees, James, and you beg. And he says: Choose. Because his finger’s on the trigger and he’s angry and he fucking needs to kill someone.”
James watched her with growing alarm.
She grabbed the lapels of his jacket with sudden ferocity. “Don’t just stand there!” she shouted in his face. “The gun’s burning up in his hand! He needs to pull the trigger! He needs to shoot it!” She g
rabbed the fabric tighter. “God damn it, James! Who. Me? Or Gary? Just name one.”
Heavy brass blasted, pounded out of the speakers, shook the room.
“Pick one now!” she shrieked, clutching him, shaking him. “The gun’s gonna go off! He’s gotta pull the trigger! He’s squeezing it! Pick a goddamn side or he’ll kill us both!”
The music collapsed.
The room fell silent, as if smoke from the aftermath was drifting across it. Brenna stepped back, released him, swung to an eerie calm. “Aw,” she said, patting his cheek. “Too bad. No answer. Gary and me, both dead. And you could have saved one of us.”
Horror washed over him. He felt more scared than he’d ever felt in his life. Brenna’s psychic injuries, the rage underlying them, were more than he could handle.
She picked up her bourbon again. “So. You had a few tips? Pointers?”
He inhaled shakily. “You have a psychiatrist’s appointment tomorrow morning.” He had found her one, and by God, she was going. He had to turn her over to someone who knew what he was doing, or he was going to lose her. If she wouldn’t go willingly, he would have her committed.
Brenna lifted an eyebrow. “Really, now?”
He wasn’t sure if someone who’d drunk as much bourbon as she had could become instantly sober, but he thought she’d just done it. He turned toward his room, wondering if she had also read his mind.
In the quiet of the night, her brother’s snoring drifting down the hallway, Brenna pulled on cargo pants and a turtleneck, slipped her passport, cash, and credit cards into her pockets and eased out of his apartment, leaving him a note on her pillow.
Sorry.
At Sheridan Square, she hailed a taxi.
“Where to?”
“Kavsak.”
“Where?”
“Sorry. Airport. LaGuardia.”
The yellow Crown Victoria pulled away from the curb and rolled down the street into darkness.
Brenna flew to Boston, paid cash for a grimy room in a flophouse, and used the next two days to organize a fresh set of travel documents and press credentials. She bought a 35mm camera and a few rolls of film—journalist props—and booked flights to Rome, then on to Ancona. The UN airlift into Kavsak was grounded, the city under heavy shelling as Nationalists and Separatists duked it out street by street, house by house, so once she got to Italy, she’d use her Ancona contacts to get across the Adriatic by boat. From that point, she’d go overland, through disputed territory, into Kavsak proper.
Now, waiting in the International Terminal at Logan Airport for her five p.m. flight, she was sitting in a cocktail bar, making good progress on another double bourbon. She noticed, with sozzled erudition, that she was feeling everything and nothing at the same time.
She stared across the concourse toward a bank of public telephones. One last task remained. She’d put it off long enough. She stood up, emptied the glass in a single gulp, and wove between the tables in their direction.
Chapter 27
Located in the West End of Portland, Maine, Margaret and Alden Ellsworth’s home was a solid structure, built by ancestors, appointed with comfortable furniture inherited from a previous century. Framed family photos lined the staircase. A small pile of mail lay atop the roll-top desk near the entrance. Worn slippers sat on a mat. Orderly, but not fastidious, the house was peaceful, comfortable with itself.
Margaret was halfway out the front door when the phone rang. She debated whether to answer—she was running late for her outpatient clinic hours at the hospital.
But it might be Alden or Daniel calling.
She went back inside. The Caller ID said ‘Unknown.’
“Hello?”
Someone on the other end fumbled the phone, apparently about to hang up.
“Hello,” she repeated.
“Margaret?”
A frisson of apprehension brushed through her.
“It’s Brenna.”
“Yes, of course, dear. I recognized your voice.” Her mind raced. Daniel had received a distraught call from James a couple of days earlier. Brenna and James had had a confrontation and she went missing in the middle of the night, leaving a terse farewell note. And here she is, resurfacing with me. “I’m so glad you’ve called. I heard you left James’, and I’ve been worried about you. I hate to think of you, alone and upset.”
“Uh. Well…I’m okay.”
Brenna sounded unfocused—anything but okay. Her speech was thick. Alcohol, Margaret surmised. Self-administered pain relief.
“I just—I was wondering…if you’d do me a favor, Margaret.”
“Of course, dear. I’ll help you in any way I can.” In the background, she heard a loudspeaker announcement. She listened carefully. Brenna was undoubtedly in crisis and Margaret wanted to know where she was, what she was doing. She made out a TSA announcement about unattended baggage. Brenna was at an airport! But—which one?
“Well, not right now, the favor, I mean…” Brenna’s speech was slurred. “But someday. You know, after some time goes by and…you think Daniel would…” She trailed off, remained silent for so long that Margaret feared she had walked away.
“Where are you, Brenna? Which airport?”
The phone rustled. Relief spread through Margaret that she hadn’t lost this tenuous contact. This was a suicide prevention call if she’d ever taken one.
“Tell him…Tell him I loved him, okay? I did. I just…” her voice cracked. “I never told him.”
“Brenna, child—” Margaret used the endearment advisedly, counting on her intuition that in her crisis, Brenna was feeling small and motherless. “Where are you?”
Silence.
“Are you feeling suicidal, honey? What are you planning?”
Brenna sniffled. Didn’t say anything. But didn’t hang up.
“I have to think,” Margaret said tenderly, hoping she was reading the situation correctly, and supplying the thoughts that Brenna couldn’t voice, “that you’re feeling pretty awful right now. Terribly alone. You’ve left Daniel, whom you still love. You’ve fought with your brother. What are you going to do now?”
She allowed a long silence, walking that thin line between giving Brenna time to gather her thoughts and letting her sever the emotional bond between them that kept her on the line.
“Tell me where you are, dear. Let me come get you.”
Brenna choked on a sob. Brenna? Crying? Her magnificent defenses were in ruins.
“You’re a wonderful woman, Brenna. Honest. Courageous. Worthy. You’ve had a terrible thing happen to you. Something so horrific and unthinkable that right now, you probably can’t see any way to live with it—any way to stop the pain associated with it.”
Brenna didn’t speak. She was in the habit of not talking, not sharing her life. The isolation was killing her.
But of all the people she could have contacted in this desperate moment, of all the means Brenna might have chosen to convey her message to Daniel—a note to be delivered by a lawyer at a later date, say—Brenna had called her. Margaret was a mother figure. She had the training that could serve Brenna’s needs. She had to think that somewhere in Brenna’s subconscious, she had called because she wanted help.
Margaret changed tack. “You’re at an airport. Where are you going? Will you at least tell me that?”
“Kavsak.”
Oh, Brenna. Sure death. But an indicator that she didn’t plan to directly take her own life in an immediate moment. She was merely going to throw herself in death’s path. “Do you have a return ticket?”
“No.”
“I don’t want you to die, dear one. Kavsak’s an awful place to go back to. I can help you transition back to a normal world. I promise you, Brenna, that if you work on this with me—if you commit to it—this can be turned around. Let me hold that faith for you.”
“You’re Daniel’s mother.”
Margaret closed her eyes. A break. A turn in the dialog. Brenna was considering the offer, albeit stil
l seeing obstacles. “You’re like a daughter to me. A mother can love more than one child at a time. You don’t really think my heart is so limited, do you?”
“I can’t be imprisoned, Margaret. Can’t be in a psych ward.”
Margaret swallowed. If she took Brenna in under these circumstances, if anything went wrong and Brenna died while in her care, not having committed her would constitute professional malpractice. She could be stripped of her credentials, lose her impeccable reputation.
“I have a place where I can keep you safe—a beautiful cottage here in Maine. Secluded. Overlooking the sea. And the work we do would be between us. No one has to know, not even Alden. He respects my need to keep certain things from him.”
“What about Daniel?”
Margaret felt the pinch, the squeeze of conflicting loyalties. But Brenna wasn’t going to reach out to anyone else. And Margaret wouldn’t leave her to cope alone with the fallout from having saved Daniel’s life. “Not Daniel, either.”
“You’ll send police.”
Trust, child. You need to trust me.
Margaret wasn’t one to make bargains with unstable patients. She couldn’t rely on their ability to keep a pact. But she saw no other way. “Tell me where you are. Promise me you’ll wait for me to come get you, and I give you my word I won’t call anyone to intercede.”
Brenna fell silent.
“I’ve never broken anyone’s trust. Without it, we have nothing. I promise you this: Your life is important to me. I will not do one thing that gets in the way of my helping you to find your way.”
“I’m at Logan,” Brenna finally said. “In Boston.”
Margaret inwardly sighed with relief. Thank God. “I’ll be there in two hours.”
She established they would meet at the International Terminal, gave Brenna her cell phone number, and—praying she wasn’t making a mistake—hung up, severing the direct link between them. Until she got to her, Brenna would be floating, unmoored, unsafe.
Day Three Page 51
