by Robin Page
They get closer and closer to the shed, and in a millisecond, Jocelyn imagines the two of them putting the balls away, alone, the pull of panties, her finger inside Kate. Want. She feels tied to the cart. Maud is yelling from the court, telling her to come on already.
When Kate speaks again her voice is forceful, knowing, a red blush like liquid spreading from her chest to her neck, to her face.
“Go back to the court,” Kate says. And then with desperation, “Please.”
5
“MY BROTHER HAD A BIG HEAD,” JOCELYN SAYS. “THAT’S ONE OF THE things I remember.”
The therapist has been pushing her to talk all session. She is trying to get her to retrieve smaller parts of her past in a controlled environment, but all Jocelyn wants to do is think about Kate. She wants to wallow in her, follow her through a door and be somewhere else.
Dr. Bruce adjusts her glasses up along the ridge of her nose. “What else?” she says. “Don’t worry if the memory isn’t perfect.”
Jocelyn looks around the office. She picks at her thumbnail. “It was heavy. You know, like when they say that in novels it doesn’t make sense, but it made sense with him. All the time, kids at school made those stupid comments about how big his brain was, what a music nerd he was.”
Jocelyn notices that the therapist has moved the botanical poster. It is harder to see. Has she done that because of me? There is a new white shabby chic shelf to the left of it, blocking half the view. She is tired of this, the dipping into the past, pulling it out of her. It pecks at her. She wishes she could be like the other women she knows. She would like to have one pure space, one room to live inside that is unblemished by the past. A place of anonymity. Kate’s lips come to mind.
“Go on,” the therapist says.
Jocelyn sighs, trying to control it. “He was sick. He was tired. He just wanted to put his head down.”
She sees the metal desk. The ugly woman behind it. The woman’s belly spilled over the edge of her tight blue jeans. Her breasts were large, like overfilled water balloons. Jocelyn felt repulsed by her.
“I thought I’d lose my mind,” Jocelyn says. “She told him to get his head off her desk. You know, like he would infect it.”
The therapist says nothing but writes something down.
“It was a different time. Not like now. People were afraid. Everyone died who had AIDS back then. There wasn’t any living with it. Living with AIDS. Hah!”
She reaches in her purse for her cell. She checks the time. She has ten more minutes. Conrad has texted her.
CONRAD: Call me.
Maud has texted her too.
MAUD: Wanna play a friendly?
Will Kate be there? Will she be teaching at the club? She realizes she needs to figure out Kate’s schedule. The thought is sudden and unintentional.
She looks at Dr. Bruce, who is waiting patiently for something from her. The room is like a vacuum—all the oxygen going out of it.
“I used to make a point of kissing him on the mouth, you know. I wanted him to know I wasn’t afraid of him.”
The memory is in the room with her now, as dangerous as a blade, and she remembers lifting his head up off the desk, the curly hair in her hands—fine as a child’s eyelashes. Inanition, is what the death certificate said. She had had to look the word up. She is not going to say that now.
After that, she and the therapist sit without talking, until the session is over. Jocelyn feels as if she has won some sort of protest by not speaking again.
“Next week, right?” the therapist says.
“Yes,” Jocelyn says, but doesn’t think she’ll return. Why come? What’s the point of languishing back there? Conrad would never know.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dr. Bruce asks. “You seem distant today. You can call me anytime. I know this is very, very hard.”
“Good. I’m fine,” Jocelyn says. A bit of a hum in it.
“Are you certain there is nothing else? I don’t have another client after you today.”
Jocelyn thinks of Mr. Baird, but what will she say, what is it really, and where will it lead once she speaks his name? She thinks of bringing up Kate, but that belongs to her. She doesn’t want to give it away.
“Nope.”
The therapist looks at her watch. “Next time we’ll use the headphones. You seem a bit anxious. They will calm you. It’s a part of your therapy. Don’t forget to do your tapping. The EMDR treatment is vital. You’ll want to begin at your eyebrows, both hands, make your way down to your armpits. Tap your way down.”
“Good,” Jocelyn says again. “That sounds good.”
Chapter Six
Simon
1
HE BUYS A MAGAZINE AT THE AIRPORT STORE, AND HEADS TO A JET HE charters through his company. He is afraid of flying. The luxury makes it easier, but still his heart pounds. He sees the Cessna Citation through the plate glass window, the men working on it, making sure it is safe. He pushes through the heavy metal doors, walks onto the tarmac. The dry air embraces him and he finds himself wondering what Jocelyn is doing while Lucy is at school. Does she sit at home alone? Should he have asked her to come, to break up the middle of her day? How weird that would have been. How wonderful. She would have thought him a lunatic. Tennis probably, he thinks. She is probably playing tennis.
He makes a shade of his hand. The sun is bright at noon. It hurts his eyes to look at the gleaming plane, which looks like a large white bird—a seagull or a swan. A swan makes him think of Lucy and her second visit to him—her little hands, shaped like sea stars, the dirty nails—semicircles that topped her fingertips. Jocelyn had resisted his invitation at first, but then had given in. Lucy brought miniature animals with her, citizens for his architectural project—koalas with ties on, hamsters with dresses and aprons. She explained to him that all the girls at school liked them. He liked them too. Maybe he could buy her a set. Maybe he could buy himself a set.
The evening had gone well, but Lucy was too serious—angry when her feathers weren’t just so, pissed if the swings were a millimeter out of position. He tried to talk her out of this. He lectured her on the importance of imperfection.
“Why would you want to do it poorly?” she’d asked.
“Not poorly,” he had said. “But you shouldn’t worry about being perfect.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, matter-of-factly, as if he were a Neanderthal.
Jocelyn told him to give it up. “I haven’t won an argument in six years,” she said.
They both smiled in the way indulgent parents do, and he felt as if he were Lucy’s father, as if Jocelyn were his wife. It was good to imagine, made it seem more possible to father his own daughter. If, in fact, she was his daughter.
As he thinks of that evening, he feels a rush of love for the little girl. He feels hope that the “maybe” daughter is really his own. He looks up to the blue sky again. Planes sing above him. He hears the grind of the wheels of the luggage being dollied along the public end of the airport. So high, he thinks, watching the line of planes waiting, levitating. How do they stay? But he knows they don’t all stay. His fear is great, but his urge to get the information about his daughter compels him forward. Is she his? Will she be as she used to be? The detective waits for him in Cambridge with facts and pictures.
He looks at his phone, but there are no messages. He checks the weather—clear. Radio RTLMC comes to him. He wonders if it still exists. He hears the voice of the commentator, the static even, although he is at LAX, twenty-plus years later: The airplane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down today as it prepared to land in Kigali. He breathes, looks at his watch. Five minutes until he boards. Block the thoughts, he tells himself. Count your breaths. Flying is safer than driving.
He walks toward the plane. The white of it hurts his eyes. He puts his sunglasses on. He wishes he could make a stop at Jocelyn’s Midwestern city, see the river she described, the bridge
. He has the idea that it might settle him. No bodies in the Ohio River. No tied wrists. He wants her to like him. He wants to know the things she knows, so they will always have something to talk about.
His legs carry him forward, even as his mind resists, and then there is the passing scent of oranges in the air as he gets closer to the plane. It stops him where he stands. He breathes in, wanting it. It is not the first time.
The ghosts of the razed California orange groves, or maybe the trees that are miles away, or even the wind that is strong, brings the scent of his wife, Vestine, to him. The oils she made—papaya, mango, but mostly orange. The drops he placed on her neck, her earlobes, the backs of her knees. Bright citrus. He inhales deeply, feels his heart grow heavy. I am going to find our daughter, he says internally, and in this way, he says it to Vestine. Are you in the trees, my love? Are you here with me?
He wants to forget. He wants to remember. “I have found our daughter,” he says out loud, wanting the thought to create reality. Her name is Lucy, a voice inside him says, and that thought comes without understanding. A thought full of need. Lucy is a certainty. The door to the plane opens. There is a woman standing there at the top of the stairs—Veronica, his preferred and requested flight attendant. They know each other well. She is there welcoming him. He walks to her. She waves.
2
INSIDE THE CESSNA, THERE IS A FULL BAR AND PREMADE FOOD THAT IS served by Veronica. She is dressed in green, and calls him sir, which somehow makes his dick hard. He watches her, assessing her value. He feels powerful looking at her. She comes with the plane in the same way that the food and the menu and the open bar does.
Simon considers the possibility of sex with her as she leans over him, making sure his seat belt is buckled correctly.
“Don’t be nervous, sir,” she says. “We have a very experienced crew.”
He has traveled with her often, but he doesn’t like that she has implied his fear. She works for him. He wants her to behave a certain way.
She is white with strawberry-blonde hair. She is large breasted, very tall, very thin. Everything he doesn’t like. Still, he thinks he would like to have sex with her. He is not picky. Men aren’t. He could make it a story to recount. Sex in a private plane, sex with a white woman. He has slept with white women before. Some for free. Some for money. They are not really his thing.
He is comfortably settled in the plane as it lifts to the sky. The captain welcomes him over the intercom. Because of his fear of flying, he is meditating on peaceful things. The seat is roomy and plush. He can smell the leather. He looks out the window and sees the Pacific Ocean. It is turquoise blue and as still as pavement. The plane thrusts forward and up, and they leave LA behind.
He tries to settle down but takeoff is the scariest part. He squeezes his armrest. The plane pulls to the left, curving, apparently heading back to where it came from. He looks at Veronica. He worries that something has happened. She shakes her head and hands him a gin and tonic in a real glass.
He closes his eyes, sips the drink. There is just a touch of turbulence as they rise, the ice in the glass rocks, and then the plane drops like a ride at a theme park. Gin spills. He opens his eyes. The plane rights itself. He tries to be steady, but the lever has clicked. The mind will not turn. He resists the urge to stand, to run. His breath picks up. Narrow nipples, he thinks. Veronica’s will be pink and small as beads. He tries to go there but can’t. The radio comes next. Always the fucking radio. This is Radio RTLMC. Twenty-six years old, already married six years. A smart boy. His father had cattle, a hat, a staff. The president’s plane has been shot down!
Veronica comes over to him, takes his drink. She kneels down. She puts her hands flat on his forearms. He is trembling. In the seconds that follow, there is his little daughter, Claudette, in his arms again, her heat—thrashing, fighting, screaming, Papa, Papa! No one could fathom how quickly it all would change.
He looks at Veronica, but she is not enough. Would she be enough naked? Small fingers hanging on to clothes, pinching material. Then begging, “Please don’t take her. Please.” He covers his face with his hands. Veronica stands. The squirm of Claudette’s body as they pull her up, up, up into the military jeep. Here now as it was that day. Vestine is offering herself. “Take me. Take me. I will do anything,” and then, like a miracle, the little body slides back down into his arms, like a rush of water. They have given his daughter back. He doesn’t think. He just turns and runs. He leaves his wife on her own.
Veronica slides into the foreground again, offering him a warm cloth. He cannot move. She is pushing his head between his knees. Love, clear in a way that it hasn’t been before, is in him like blood. He, as fast as an Olympic runner with Claudette. Ready, set, go. He is off with her, a hero, earning the awe in her eyes, he is the father, the pursuer cannot overtake him, and then the tire iron across the back of his head. He thinks at first a machete. Over and over again. He can feel her falling away, even as he worries about her fall. A man is there picking her up. He feels hands going through his pockets. By the time he regains consciousness, Claudette is back in the jeep, and the pygmy has sprayed semen on his wife’s face. The sperm, like parasites, like sticky bits of rice, on the edge of Vestine’s chin. The Twa inside her—an indignity she will not recover from. He pats and pats his pockets, but the identity cards are gone. The thought of losing them is almost as frightening as the thought of losing his daughter.
Veronica is lifting him now, loosening his tie, telling him he will be okay. Cold fingers feel his pulse. Still, there in front of him is the Rwandan sky, the sound of cattle, and the rumble of the jeep. Simon hears his own breathing. Hears the word hyperventilating. The young driver turns to him before he drives off—a ski mask, a machete, a fly zipped up, but the eyes are known over a lifetime. Kites held in the windy, boring days of summer. They are taking the children, someone says in the early days. Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn.
“Abrahm,” he mouths and then screams. “Please don’t take her!”
But nothing happens even as he says the name. Did he say the name? The jeep rolls slowly forward across the treacherous landscape, and yet far faster than his own legs can carry him. He tries. He runs, blood in his ears, his eyes, but they are always just ahead of him. His daughter sits with flat, shocked eyes, soundlessly looking over the empty cab of the jeep, at the place where her mother has been raped. The old man in the back is stroking his daughter’s shoulder. Such a little girl. Such a little girl, he says, or does he say? Is this part of the memory or a part of his fear? The distance has grown between, but none of it stops.
“Sir, I need you to slow your breathing,” he hears, as Veronica wipes his forehead. He wants to push her away. “Sir.” And then a slap across his face. “Sir. I’m sorry. You’ve got to calm down.”
He comes out of it as if he’s been inside the terror of a nightmare. The other world is still in him. The world he wakes to is suspicious and strange. The vague static of the radio, sparking and then out.
If the radio hadn’t happened, or the plane hadn’t crashed, or the men hadn’t come for his daughter and raped his wife, he would have lived to be a good man. A man.
He takes hold of Veronica’s wrist. Two handed. Tight. An Indian burn is what the American children call it. She shrieks, but he holds on.
“You’re okay, sir. Please, sir. You’re having a panic attack. Let me help you.”
He cannot let go. Blood beneath the surface of her skin makes her forearm pink as a pig’s belly.
“We will have to land the plane, sir. Please, let me help you.”
He longs for the twitch in his pants again, but she is too thin, too pale. She reminds him of soft white cabbage in soup. He wants her to call him sir again. Make her say it. He feels his fingers being pulled away. She places something over his nose and mouth. It seems to have fallen from the sky.
“There now,” she says. He breathes, a rush of oxygen, stars that twinkle and shine, and then shame.
T
HEY DO NOT SPEAK OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED WHEN HE REACHES EQUILIBRIUM. Veronica works for him. He is the customer. The one that is always right. He does not owe her an explanation. He thanks her for caring for him. It was nothing, she says. A driver is waiting. A shiny black car. They are in Boston. Cambridge is just on the other side of the river. Rain falls steadily. He knows it will eventually be behind him. He will forget it and Veronica will pretend to forget it too. There is traffic in the tunnel. It takes them an hour to reach the hotel. He is glad when the driver speaks.
“Here we are, sir,” he says. “The Royal Sonesta. I think you will enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you,” Simon says, stunned still, trying to come back from the fear of the flight.
“The river is just there on the other side. Lechmere Canal.”
“Thank you for the information,” he says. His manners come to the rescue and make him sound sane.
A river city, he thinks, looking out the window. Abrahm would have picked a river city—water, as much a part of the two of them as the hair on their heads. He remembers baited hooks. Massive bullfrogs lured with mice, the mangrove trees. The detective says to meet at six o’clock. He says he has solid information.
Simon is grateful that the pictures stopped on the plane when they did. He is relieved that it didn’t go farther. Farther would mean that he’d see the thing that she saw. Farther would show Vestine’s despair. It was too much for her and for him when he came back empty handed. He wanted to think it was grief, already missing her child. He wanted to think that grief leaves, but it was deeper than that. It was a complete undoing of all that he and she had thought was true. His ineptitude magnified through her tears. You didn’t get her? You didn’t get her? Get her! He could not live with that. Neither could she.
He sees her back, ahead of him. She is running in the swamp. Running away from him. I cannot be a father, he realizes. I have never been able to be that, and in that realization, he sees that he has never been a husband either. Has he ever even been a man?
