Origin

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  But as Keller and I follow Pia to the front door, she seems, once again, fragile and resigned. “All right, dear,” she says, her voice level as a funeral director’s. “I know you’ve got to go. You’ve got your life. I understand that.”

  I kiss her again, the cool powdered side of her cheek sliding along mine, her hand like satin on my other cheek. “I’d like it if you’d come back again to see us, Lena. Pretty soon.” She doesn’t look at me as she says this. “But I forgive you if you don’t.”

  “All right, Pia,” I say. “I’ll try, okay?”

  I let Keller take the lead outside. He guides me through his foot wells across the snow to the car. Then he returns, grabs the shovel from the side of the house, and clears the walkway in fifteen big scoops. My entire upper body aches as if I’d been the one shoveling, and am only now aware of it. And all I want in the world is to be inside Keller’s car, driving away from here.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHEN I COME TO WORK THE NEXT MORNING, MARGO GLANCES AT me then looks away without a word. There’s a yellow While-You-Were-Out message in Peg’s hard-slanting hand on my desk: Please see Frank as soon as you get in. The note is stuck to the file on the latest infant death: Infant, Girl, Abernathy.

  “Ah—you’re still alive.” Frank doesn’t look at me as he signs some payroll forms, but Peg takes a long gander before she picks up the forms and strolls out. “When you wouldn’t come to the phone the other day, I was afraid that Keller had locked you in the cupboard.” Frank smiles, then winces. “Sorry, lousy joke.” I slide into the couch opposite his desk. “I’m just glad you’re okay, kiddo.” He taps his laser pen on a pile of papers.

  “I’m glad to see you too, Frank,” I say cautiously.

  He waits a minute, tapping. “Well, okay, then. So.” He looks around. “Fine. So yeah, there was a bit of a scene at the Lab the other day.” He rubs his thumbs and forefinger across his forehead and slowly lowers them. “I know you’re upset about the news coverage. We all are. No one blames you. I know the way those reporters work—”

  “I don’t care about the reporters,” I say, and Frank’s expression grows wary. “The article made us look bad—but the fact that those blankets were mailed . . .”

  Frank touches two fingers to his mouth. He gets up, skirts the desk, and swings shut the office door. He slips back behind his desk. “Please be careful, Lena,” he says quietly. “That article put us all in the hot seat. I just got another call from Cummings’s office—they want me to sacrifice someone in Trace Analysis—assign the blame and boot ’em. They think it’ll ease some of the . . . public perception problems.”

  “But that’s not fair! Why us? Evidence Collection should’ve flagged the blankets, and the medical examiner could’ve caught the poison in autopsy. Not to mention one of the detectives should’ve asked the Cogans where they got that blanket to start with!”

  “I know. Absolutely, I agree. But even so . . .” He lets go a deep breath. “Your name was mentioned.”

  “My name!” My voice is sharp and hot. “I found the evidence.”

  He makes a gentling, volume-lowering gesture with the flat of his hand. “The commissioner asked why you didn’t find it sooner,” he says dryly.

  I sit back, breathless, comprehension finally descending: I’m at their mercy. If the board wants to construct a case against me, they will. “What’s going to happen?”

  Frank runs his hand along the length of his tie. He’s wearing a cream-colored shirt and a jacket hangs on the back of his chair—clothes for meetings. “The baby deaths are being reclassified as related homicides.” He looks at me apologetically. “I’m keeping you on the investigation full-time. It’s going to be the top priority in the Lab, until we break it open.” Another stroke of the tie. Frank leans forward and says, “But lay low, okay? Our biggest problem isn’t the media.”

  I hug my arms and consider the grave look Margo gave me this morning, as if she were making an unfortunate but necessary decision. “You mean my friend.” I’m trying to be glib, but my voice sounds knotted up.

  Frank smirks. “Friend,” he says. “Word like that scares the shit out of me right now.” He picks up a file and opens it to pages of notes, prints, drawings, and photographs. He slides it across the desk toward me. “Next development. The Cogan case.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Bruno Pollard’s boys went back over it and they found some new prints.”

  I shake my head. “No—no way. I went over that crib myself.” I glance at the pages. “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday—after all hell broke loose. They went back to the crib and came in with three prints.” He hands me some photocopied pages. I take the page in pure disbelief. “They think they’re simultaneous impressions—index, middle, and ring—right next to each other.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I murmur, checking the orientation of the marks. “Sometimes prints look like they’re simultaneous when they’re not.” But I can tell that these are. The page buzzes and floats between my fingers. “This isn’t possible. I went over that thing inch by inch.”

  “Definitely they’re from an outside person, most likely a stranger—intruder,” Frank says. “The prints don’t match any of the domestic staff or family. We checked if maybe there was some sort of visiting nanny, cook . . .” His voice is compressed, wondering, no doubt, how I blew this.

  I close my eyes again for a moment, mentally rescanning the cribs: I’d covered every inch of Matthew Cogan’s crib with dusting powder. It’s not possible that I missed these prints and yet it’s the only explanation. Access to the Evidence Room is limited to Lab and police personnel—objects in there are treated like sacred relics, tagged, catalogued, monitored. Lately it seems that I’ve been missing all sorts of things—blindsided by my own colleagues.

  “We need to go back and check the other cribs,” Frank says. “Obviously. We’ve been running these prints through the FBI’s database, but nothing yet. No leads beyond the prints themselves. We need to get everyone back to work at the crime scene—we’ll have to do a lot of backtracking.

  I fold my hands. My fingers flicker with the muscle memory of the search process—twirling the brush over the crib, shoulders hunched, eyeballing every joint, seam, bar, every wooden pane. “Frank, could you just tell me exactly where on the crib did they find these prints?” I gesture to the briefcase.

  He looks at the file, then at me; his expression is once again mild. “Well, I guess they found them all on the—oh, I don’t even know what you call it. Carole knows this stuff. That side bar? The part that slides up and down so you can reach the baby?”

  “Right there? On the top piece?”

  He shrugs, smiles almost nervously. “Right out in plain sight, I guess.”

  “These prints are too . . . weird, fakey. Did the cops check them against their own prints? It doesn’t make sense that I’d miss that.”

  Frank folds his arms. “They checked.”

  “But don’t you think we should focus on the blankets? I’d really like—”

  He’s shaking his head. “I’ve got a bunch of guys working on those damn blankets—and they haven’t produced anything more yet. We’ve recovered four blankets—all of them mailed anonymously. Won’t be possible to trace them.” He turns and unhooks his suit jacket. “Everyone’s waiting for some sort of . . . manifesto or demand or God knows what to pop up now. Apparently, there’s a group out by the Iroquois reservation in Nedrow—the NFF—Native Freedom Fighters—something like that. They’ve wanted to bring suit against the city for years—get the Solvay dye people for dumping into Onondaga Lake. Wouldn’t mind joining up with them myself,” he says dryly. “But Cummings has wrangled with these guys a bunch and he thinks they deserve extra-special attention.”

  I’m astounded. “Why would an activist group start murdering babies?”

  Frank smiles
his small, thin smile. “Well, it’s our Mr. Cummings’s opinion that all them ‘tree huggers’ and nature lovers are anti-American.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Frank lifts his eyebrows. “Welcome to police work.”

  “Frank, look—what about doing background checks on the victims’ families? Look for patterns, some sort of connection. I mean, we know that the killer seems to focus on Lucius, but why these babies specifically?”

  He opens the file, nodding as I speak, running his finger down a police report. “We’ve been watching that. So far all that’s come up is that some of these parents have ties to the Lucius dye plant—one of them works in manufacturing, another’s a secretary in HR. And then of course, there’s Erin Cogan’s family—a bunch of robber barons—which could give some credence to Cummings’s theory that this is some sort of fringe group, targeting the evil capitalist, pollution-maker.”

  I look off toward the photograph of lyrical sails over Frank’s desk. “But that’s so elaborate—it’s just as possible the killer is another plant employee—someone with a grudge against their colleagues.”

  “Oh sure.” He stands. “We’re checking into that as well, going through employee records, interviews, the whole works. But obviously that theory isn’t as exciting to the press as a local terrorist cell. And I wish I had time to share more of Mr. Cummings’s insights on this topic with you, but I’m late for another goddamn press conference.”

  Frank moves to open his door and I touch his elbow. “Frank, uh . . .” My voice is so low that he has to lean in close to hear me. “The other night? At the house, when you and Carole made dinner for, um, me and Charlie?” Frank drops his eyes circumspectly. “Did he make it home okay?”

  Frank frowns. “What do you mean?”

  I slide my hands under the desk, feeling absurdly bashful. “I just mean, you know, he was drunk and it was such a cold night to walk all that way. I kept thinking how he didn’t really have boots or—”

  Frank puts his hand out. “Lena—Charlie didn’t walk anywhere. He turned right around as soon as he saw us drive away and he had Carole call him a cab. He had a nice, comfy ride home. And I think he borrowed your gloves.” He waves, already out the door.

  CHAPTER 25

  LIVING WITH APES TAUGHT ME TO LIVE INSIDE THE SENSES. Sometimes I saw meteoric birds that hurtled overhead, all diamond-colored feathers, the leaves dripping in emerald clumps, round as papayas. I looked up and butterflies trickled out of the trees, floating on sapphire flanges, the rice paper of their wings drying. There was the brush of insect legs, the scrape of swaying fronds, the velvet swish of knee-high grasses. And the scrolls and corollas of flowers, their colors: ginger, lemon. I smelled ocean brine and water: oceanic flowers undulating with wind.

  Days of walking, foraging, ape hands dipping into thickets full of berries. My ape mother lifted her eyes in that prickling manner—noticing some new thread of scent. In the distance, groaning, knocking sounds, as if a rotted tree were falling. Tiny gray and black lizards dipped and rose in place, telegraphing silent messages. I saw a shimmering in the leaves and I pushed through it, a child in a dream. The apes held back, motionless, their voices absorbed into the cicada buzz.

  I believed I could feel my mother following me.

  The leaves lifted and fell and lifted and fell, and I felt the respiration of the earth, the way the rain forest inhaled smoke and dark gases, and exhaled the white sky.

  I moved to the fringe of the leaves and saw a thing so new and unknown to me that I almost couldn’t see it at all. I perceived it as angular motion, so smooth it seemed it might melt in the rain. Its skin was hairless, tender, and speckled as mushrooms. I took in severe, arrowlike eyes, the high rake of its cheekbones. It was hacking away branches.

  I must’ve been drawn to the thing I recognized in myself, unwinding like a fern. I had to go toward it.

  I don’t know how old I was. I imagine myself small and naked, skin matted with fallen fur, my hair a canopy around my shoulders, full of twigs and leaves. My skin the color of earth. My hands and feet pliable as leather.

  Time and my memory fold together, a puzzle box; inside the box is my ape mother; I try to turn the box, to look directly in at her, but it has no right angles or smooth surfaces. I didn’t know, when I stepped outside the perimeter of leaves, how irrevocable that step was. One second my hand was curled up inside of hers. The next, her touch had fallen away, and with it, the forest. The humans saw me, and the butterflies froze in midflight. The trees exhaled. The humans came forward, covering me with their scent, and the rain forest was lost to me forever.

  AFTER THAT, TIME THICKENS. One day, I woke in a bed in the home of Henry and Pia McWilliams. There was an imposing piece of furniture against the wall opposite my bed. It reached nearly to the ceiling, and I later learned it was called an armoire. It had a burnished glow, so you could see the soul of the old teakwood. It was carved with climbing vines and petals, with the suggestions of beaks and eyes. I pressed myself backward into the bed, into the white slippery sheets.

  When the door opened and Pia walked in, it wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen her, though I seem to remember it that way. I slipped out of the sheets and crawled under the bed and cried desperately for my ape mother to come and take me home.

  THAT EVENING, I FIND myself back in Keller’s guest room. In the room next door is the man that I slept with. I suppose I’m doing things out of order. Pia told me that you’re supposed to arrange for marriage before sex, and friendship might come after all that. Charlie told me, later, that wasn’t necessarily true.

  There was nothing orderly about the other night with Keller. And it seems that neither of us has much of a grasp on what it means now. Was it a preface to something? I have the impression that we’re both waiting to know how the other feels before deciding on our own feelings.

  This evening, after hours of discussing the new prints and the Abernathy case, I tell Keller I’m heading to bed. He shuffles around in the hallway outside the cracked open bedroom door. Finally, his shadow stops and he says, “Lena—is there—anything you need?”

  I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, hands dropped in my lap. On the floor, by the bed, is my crime scene kit, a worn black box. I look up. “I wish I had a toothbrush,” I say.

  He pauses before saying, “If it’s not gross, you can use mine. Get you a new one tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, thank you, I will.”

  A few moments later, he taps on the door. I flip open the silver hook and Keller enters. He has a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some of his shirts and jeans. I take them from him. I stand there, holding the clothes, one hand on top, as if they might take off. “You don’t have to give me your clothes,” I say. “This is too much.”

  “Just for now.” His smile shows his good, even teeth. “I want ’em back.”

  He lingers there a moment, an intricate sort of intersection between us. I’m not equipped for such subtleties—a single look like turning down an alley and into a maze.

  Keller drops his chin, his smile easing, and he steps back. He goes to the door, puts his hand on the knob. “Would you like this . . . ?” He seems to be waiting for me to stop him. The door half shut between us.

  “Yes, please,” I say. And he steps out and pulls it shut.

  CHAPTER 26

  I TURN IN THE GUEST BED UNTIL I CAN’T STAND THE SILENCE OF THE room. Finally I get up and pad back down the hallway, back to the welcoming emptiness of the living room. I sit on the couch with my knees gathered in my arms, pressed to my chest, watching the night clouds. I remember how I’d stupidly worried about Charlie when he was sitting snug in a cab. For some reason, this makes me as angry as just about anything else that happened in our marriage.

  I doze on the couch and wake again after just a few hours’ sleep. After another hour or so, I give up and pull on
Keller’s clothes. The plaid cotton shirt holds a dim scent of laundry soap and, even fainter, the smell of Keller’s skin—I hold the sleeve to my nose. Keller’s bedroom door is half opened like a question mark. I hover outside, and when I finally reach over to knock, he murmurs, “Lena?”

  His dresser clock reads five a.m. and the room is warm with sleep. He looks at me through slitted eyes. “Hey.” He puts one hand on my arm, drawing me toward the bed, but I slip out of his grasp, saying, “I want to go out to the last infant death scene.”

  I tell him I have to see if the new fingerprints are also in the Abernathy home: I have to see them with my own eyes.

  He waits and then I’m not sure if he was awake enough to hear me. But finally he stretches, exhales, and says, “Yeah. I’ll go with you.”

  THE LOCATION OF ONE of the latest infant deaths—Infant, Girl, Abernathy—is a house at the northwest corner of Windsor and Euclid, practically walking distance to Keller’s house—though not in this weather. A doctor-and-professor neighborhood. Joe and Tina Abernathy, the parents, are both anesthesiologists, both in residence at Upstate Medical—the monolith hospital that flanks the Lab. The houses are squat, wide-hipped Victorians with cupolas and turrets and porches set off by wooden bracelets of railings. All of it is edged in ice, a fairy-tale neighborhood that’s been here for over a century.

  Keller pulls over to the curb and looks out the window. “The lost dreams of architects and city planners.”

  Yellow police tape cordons off the perimeter of the house; it glistens in the predawn. Perfect conditions—draped in silence and darkness—to read the mind of the house; without speaking or answering questions or facing reporters.

  I get out of the car, then stop. The ripple of sorrow comes in a minor cascade. I wish I didn’t know anything about this house. Keller comes around to my side of the car.