Love Is Red

by Sophie Jaff

  “You’re leaving?”

  Is she relieved? “Just for two weeks.”

  “I think that will be good for you, given the circumstances.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Actually, I think this might be a good thing for everyone.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I didn’t know how to mention it, but I was growing a little concerned with these calls.”

  “Concerned?” Oh no.

  “I’ve been worried about the effect they’re having on Lucas.”

  “What effect?”

  “He gets very quiet afterward, won’t eat, won’t talk. It can take hours for him to calm down.”

  “I see.” Oh my God.

  “I hope you don’t mind me telling you this—”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’m sure we all just want what’s best for him.”

  Sure you do. “Of course . . .”

  “Why don’t you call in a couple days, once you settle in? Just give him a little break.”

  It’s not you, it’s me. “Oh okay.” My voice is faint.

  “So where are you off to?” She’s determinedly cheerful now that the uncomfortable problem of Lucas’s dead mother’s friend has been dealt with.

  “Vermont.”

  “I hear Vermont is beautiful this time of year.” She’s all sweetness and light. I say nothing, so she continues. “Will you be going by yourself?

  “I’m going with a friend.”

  “Well, that’s nice. The city can be so terrible in summer, and especially now, what with . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure to tell Lucas you called to say good-bye.”

  You’d like it if I said good-bye forever. “Thank you,” I say, “and—”

  “You take care now, enjoy your vacation!” Click.

  “—tell him I send my love,” I say to no one.

  We have decided to go for two weeks. Two weeks away from the media and the police and the public, the intrigue and speculation and conspiracy theories and burning curiosity, because there’s something stigmatizing about my story, something sordid, the headlines, and most of all the memories. Two weeks away from the city frying, the sun soaking through and sizzling the cement. The city has turned ugly now, snarling. Before we were all together, united against something, but then a mistake was made, it was the wrong guy, another woman is dead, and things fell apart.

  Now we realize the nightmare is not over; it will never be over; no one is safe, no one, no one. The police have lost our trust and then some. It could be anyone. Everyone is suspect, a suspect.

  Two weeks. I asked for leave from my temp job. They gave it. I was only filling in anyway. They found someone else. They understand that I have to get away from

  THE GIRL WHO GOT AWAY.

  Two weeks spared from

  SPARED FROM THE SICKLE MAN.

  “Are you going to sell your story?” Only Megan is brave enough, awful enough, to ask me. She sighs when I tell her no. It isn’t my story, it’s Andrea’s story, and Andrea is dead and my story is only an experience steeped in her blood.

  Now people are leaving, fleeing, flying, running. We’re two of them.

  We need to be able to contact you, say the police. As long as we can contact you.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” says Sasha. “I’d leave too if I could.”

  “Wait, who is this guy? What’s his story?” Liz wants to know. “I thought you were with David.”

  David and I went for coffee. It was early in the afternoon. Around four, a strange time, we couldn’t find a place that suited so we settled on a diner and ordered coffee. We sat and made a little small talk. Then, at last, I told him. I choked over the words but I got them out somehow. I couldn’t look at him while I said it. Then at last I looked up.

  He was silent for a long time, his face a mask. Some music played, something from the sixties.

  “I know that Sael told you but I wanted to tell you myself and to tell you how sorry I am.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. In that case, here’s what I have to say,” he said, and his voice was gentle, and quiet and utterly deliberate. “Please understand that I don’t want to see you or hear from you or be contacted by either one of you ever again.” He looked at me unsmiling and calm. “Do I make myself clear?”

  I was trembling. “Yes,” I said.

  He quietly stood up, put some money on the table, and walked out.

  I sat there. Songs played. Beads of water formed and fell down the side of the glass.

  “Will that be all?” asked the waiter.

  “Yes,” I told him, “I think that will be all.”

  It’s been harder for Sael. I haven’t asked him what was said; I haven’t dared. It is the one thing we don’t talk about.

  Now I say, “It feels like we’re running away.”

  And Sael says, “We are.”

  Everyone wants me gone, and not just Cheryl Kaskow. Grief is a burden. It’s embarrassing, dirty somehow. People are happy to hear that I’m taking a break.

  “It’s post-traumatic stress disorder,” everyone says.

  “It’s going to take time,” everyone says.

  “So, Sael, that’s an unusual name.” My mother says “unusual,” but she’s asking, Is he like us? White and middle class? “Well, darling, getting away for a while does make sense after what happened.”

  That’s Andrea’s murder, as in “what happened,” as in “after what happened.”

  “Call me if you need anything,” says my mother. We both know I won’t. She has yet to mention Andrea’s name, to ask after Lucas.

  Lucas, oh, Lucas.

  Lucas may as well be a piece of luggage lost somewhere within the system. The “temporary” feels permanent. I call Andrea’s office, I call a law firm that Sael recommended, I call social services, I write emails to everyone, and each time I run into the brick wall of:

  “Without knowing the wishes of the deceased parent, we cannot proceed.”

  The lawyer’s couched language:

  “It’s been temporarily misplaced, but we’re doing everything in our power to address the situation.”

  But the situation is a little boy who has no mother. An orphaned four-year-old, his life sentence in some lost manila folder. Not that I can help much; I too am adrift.

  Sael came with me when I needed to pack my stuff. I won’t go back there by myself. We said little. I moved as quickly as possible. Places soak up the people who live in them. She’s gone, but the apartment is sodden with memories. I walk past Andrea’s room and realize that I’m holding my breath. Like I do when driving past a graveyard. I take my jewelry, most of my clothes. I don’t look in the corner of my bedroom. I don’t look to see if I can see the pennies.

  What pennies? There are no pennies.

  Afterward I get pretty drunk. I get drunk and I cry and cry and cry and Sael holds me. I wonder if I will ever stop crying.

  “Oh, fuck it,” says Sael. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  “Go for it,” says Michelle. “You need the time off, but stay in touch.”

  “Night or day, you can call me, you know that, right?” Liz says.

  I do. These are my two-in-the-morning friends; these are my girls.

  I haven’t heard from my father. I wonder if he’s still alive. If he cares that I am.

  It can’t hurt to leave; it can’t hurt to get away from the streets that have become the Sickle Man’s grisly playground, through which he runs rampant like a rabid dog, where no one is safe out of the apartment or in the apartment. If he wants you, he’ll get you.

  They found another girl today. Ashley Miller. Dead on her bed in a Carroll Gardens studio apartment, still wearing her retro glasses frames when they found her.

  Meanwhile, I check under the bed. Meanwhile, I check the inside of the closet. The dre
ams are the worst. I wake up bathed in sweat, shaking. Sael is always there. Rocking me back to sleep. Holding me till my eyelids grow heavy again.

  I can’t remember my dreams, but I know somehow that I soon will.

  Two weeks, somewhere new. Somewhere with trees. Somewhere far from here, somewhere I can breathe. So we get in a car and we drive and drive and drive.

  Now we are here.

  I love it.

  The air smells sweeter and the breeze is cooler. My food tastes better. The steaks are more steak-y, the tomatoes more tomato-y. We drink some wine and we drink more beer and we drink gallons of iced tea and lemonade and we combine the two. Sael jokes that we should market this drink; we’d make a fortune.

  “Ha, ha,” I say.

  We play endless card games, sometimes together, sometimes solitaire. There is no connection to the outside world apart from an old TV set, which sulks in the corner, unwatched. We read books. Sometimes I read passages aloud. Sometimes I don’t.

  We lie on beach chairs on the wooden deck outside the bedroom. We sprawl on threadbare towels on the dark sand by the lake. We rock on the rocking swing on the downstairs porch. We collapse on old green-and-yellow couches, which squeak in protest.

  We take walks; sometimes only gentle hikes, close to home and through bits of wood, and sometimes more ambitious, climbing toward a goal. We swim, suits in the day, skinny-dipping at night under a sky alight with stars, the water cool and lapping. It feels illicit, silkier, siltier.

  In the twilight we cover ourselves with bug spray. We light large citronella candles and hope, more than trust, that the mosquitoes will be deterred. They whine but we ignore them—ignore them and they’ll go away. There are fireflies to be seen, sparks in the dark, and once or twice a bat wheeling and circling in the sky. I squeak and cover my hair and Sael laughs.

  Down below is the little town, complete with small and homey restaurants, a dark and woody bar with antlers and little signs with hair-raising homilies and a pool table. Some tourist traps, but some real spots. We find a great coffee shop with wonderful coffee. Sael goes there to work.

  There’s a farmer’s market too, if you like that sort of thing, and I do, although Sael could take it or leave it. There seems to be a thriving community, at least in the summer, and some concerts and art fairs not far away. Just in case we get bored, I collect pamphlets, and there are a million little things to do, provided we want to. We don’t, though. We aren’t bored. We have taken two weeks to get away, to laze about, to heal.

  I cook. Easy things: salads, burgers, cold soups. Sometimes I join Sael at the coffee shop and linger over an iced mocha but mostly I stay up at the cabin. I never feel scared in the cabin. I’m not lonely. I am calm. I am safe. I sleep, I take small walks, I wade into the lake. Sael calls it the fishing hole. I read. I hum old pop songs under my breath. Little is required of me. Sael and I are the only two people on earth.

  It is beginning to work.

  Slowly, slowly, it is beginning to work. I have a little bottle of white pills. I am ready to take them, to do anything to stop the late-night memories or the dreams. I still can’t remember them but they leave me sweaty and wrung out. On the first night I took one, and on the second night, but then on the third I forgot and slept deeply. It’s a miracle. I don’t question it.

  The cell phone reception is not good here in the woods and the mountains. There are pockets on the path near the lake, at certain other spots, but on the whole it’s more off than on. I don’t miss it: the endless calls from the media, my well-meaning friends, the gossip-hungry acquaintances. Except here I am a week and two days in. Pacing, back and forth, kicking up the gravel, feeling the sun on my arms and the back of my neck.

  Please, God, let it be Lucas who answers.

  If it’s her I’ll just say, Hi, Cheryl. It’s been just over a week—see, see I’m being good, I’m staying away, I’m enjoying the Vermont sunshine—and I thought I would just check in.

  Keep it light, keep it light.

  Hi, Cheryl, how are you doing? I’ll pause for her answer and then I’ll say, It’s been almost two weeks, so I just thought I’d see how Lucas was doing . . .

  Let me speak with Lucas, you bitch.

  The receiver is picked up.

  “Hello?”

  I launch in. “Hi, Cheryl, how are you—”

  “Kat?”

  I’m thrown.

  “Kat?”

  “Lucas!” Thank you, God, thank you. “Hey, honey! How are you?”

  “Okay.” His voice is low, upset.

  I shift gears. “What’s wrong?”

  “You didn’t call me for so long.”

  “Oh, honey.” Fuck this stupid woman. Fuck her. “Oh, honey, I called, didn’t Mrs. Kaskow tell you I was traveling?”

  “No.”

  “Well, when I called she said you were out . . . having fun,” I add lamely.

  There’s a silence on the other end.

  “Where is she now, love?”

  “She’s taking a nap.”

  Thank God. “Excellent! I get to talk to you all by yourself on the phone!” I sound fake, too bright.

  “Yes . . .” He is doubtful.

  “How are you? What did you do today?”

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t like the way he sounds. “Nothing?”

  . . .

  Lucas, talk to me. “That doesn’t sound like too much fun.”

  “Kat?”

  “Yes, baby?”

  “When are you coming to see me?”

  Oh God. “Oh, babes . . .” I hear her voice in my head: It can take hours for him to calm down.

  If she finds out about this I’ll never be able to speak with him. What do I say? Oh God, what do I say?

  “Why can’t you come now?” He’s close to tears.

  How do I answer this? What do I say? What do I do? “Lucas, I’ll come to see you as soon as I’m back in the city, okay?” Screw Mrs. Kaskow, she’ll have to deal with it.

  I hear it, down the phone a tiny sigh. It’s heartbreaking that a four-year-old has a reason to sigh like that. “Okay.”

  “Sweetie, can I ask you a question?” I don’t want to ask, but I need to know.

  “Yes?”

  “How are the ladies, have you seen them around?”

  “No.” He sounds genuinely surprised now. I’m actually relieved that my question has taken him away from the sadness, just for a moment.

  “Well, that’s good, right?” I hazard.

  “No.” He hesitates. “It’s because the ladies is with you now.”

  “Oh.” My voice is normal, but my veins carry chips of ice; the hair is standing up on my arms. “Why do you think that is?” I have a sudden desire to look behind me. What would I see if I did?

  “They want to take care of you.”

  “Well, that’s nice.” Take care of me, like for good?

  “Kat?”

  “Yes, hon?”

  “I miss her. I miss Momma.”

  “Oh, Lucas.” My throat tightens, my eyes prick, I swallow hard. “I know you do. I miss her too.” I would give anything to be able to hug him, but he can’t cry, so I think hard for a moment and then say, “Knock knock!”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Boo.”

  “Boo who?”

  “Don’t cry, it’s just me!”

  . . .

  “Sael’s been teaching me,” I explain in the silence that follows this. “Want to hear another one?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, knock knock!”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Canoe.”

  “Canoe who?”

  “Canoe help me with my homework?”

  “You don’t have any homework.” He is almost reproachful. “You a grown-up.”

  “Now you tell me! Why have I been doing all these math problems all night long?” And amazingly I hear a weak, waterlogged giggle. I close my eyes, blinking back tears. “That’s better, th
at’s what I like to hear.”

  “Kat?”

  “Yes, hon?”

  “You promise you’ll come and see me soon?”

  There’s a lump in my throat. This kid is killing me. “I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  “Honey, you should probably go.” Before she wakes up and I never get to speak with you again.

  “She’s still sleeping.”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Kaskow.”

  How did he know that? “Well . . .”

  “But she’ll wake up soon.”

  “Lucas?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe don’t tell anyone we spoke today.” That’s good, Katherine, encourage deception.

  “It’s a secret?”

  “That’s right, it’s our secret.” Jesus, I sound gross.

  “Kat?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you tell me one more?”

  “Just one, here goes. Knock knock!”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Noah.”

  “Noah who?”

  “Noah a good place where I can get something to eat around here?”

  He laughs. “You’re silly, Kat.”

  “I noah, I noah.”

  He laughs again.

  “I love you, Lucas.”

  “Love you, Kat.”

  And he’s gone.

  Sael is coming down the path toward me. He opens his arms. I walk into them.

  We stand for a long time not saying anything, then, “Not so good, huh?”

  “No.” My face is against his shoulder, my voice muffled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I can’t help him. I mean, he’s asking me when I’m coming to see him. She didn’t even tell him that I called. I hate that he’s with that woman!”

  “Boy”—he sighs—“I can’t believe they haven’t found it yet.”

  “I know. It’s insane.”

  We have discussed options for hours, trying to be practical, trying to keep calm, yet each time we speak of it my rage and incredulity flares up again.

  “Any other family members found?”

  “Andrea’s half sister, supposedly.”