by Misha Crews
“You’re saying that for you to keep your integrity, you need to maintain the life that you’ve made for yourself, and not let anything break it apart.” Adam’s voice was neutral.
“Exactly,” Jenna said gratefully. Adam always seemed to know what she meant to say. “Sometimes I feel like my life is a crystal ball: strong and solid, but full of hairline cracks. I have to be strong and hold it just right in both my hands, or the cracks will widen and the whole thing will fall apart.”
“And with you holding your world together so carefully, you’re not sure how I can fit in.”
“Well, it sounds pretty cold and awful when you say it like that, but you’re right as usual. I don’t know how you can fit in — or if you can at all, for that matter.”
He digested that with characteristic silence. “I understand.”
“Do you?” This time it was Jenna who stopped. They faced each other in the murky light. “I wish you could explain it to me, then. Because I seem to be in a complete mess about you.”
Hope flickered in his face, and she knew that she should have kept that last statement to herself. “That’s encouraging,” was all he said.
She shook her head emphatically. “No, it’s not. At least, it wasn’t meant to be.”
Jenna looked up and down the empty street. Adam caught the meaning behind the gesture. Another metaphor. “Do we keep going forward, or do we go back?” He pointed up the street. “It’s dark up that way, and there’s no telling what we’ll find. Back that way” — he pointed the opposite direction, towards Bill and Kitty’s house — “we know the road. Me, you, Bud — we’ve been over it a million times, and it never really changes. Maybe it’s time we walked forward into the dark, to see what else might be out there.”
Jenna’s voice was hard. “After all these years of running, I would’ve thought you’d know what’s out there.” Memories glinted in the darkness: The silver badge of the kind officer who had knocked on her door one morning and told her that her husband had died. An old photo, showing the man she had loved embracing another woman and a child. A hole dug in the ground for Bud’s coffin, like the hole in her heart, filling up with pain. “It’s just more road, Adam. It’s just more road. I’m sick of the unknown. All I want now is to raise my son in peace.”
Tears threatened behind her eyes, and she summoned her anger to push them away. “You can go on exploring your dark paths if you want to. But I’m going this way.” She turned and started back towards Bill and Kitty’s house. Her words floated over her shoulder in the darkness. “I’m going back to my family. I’m going home.”
* * *
Adam watched her walk away. Her slender figure cut through the night like a sword, until she was swallowed up by shadows. Eventually he started after her, his footsteps slow and resigned. He had ruined the moment. Again.
He hadn’t set out to make this a “moment.” When he’d invited Jenna to walk with him, what he’d really wanted to tell her was that he understood why she’d let everyone think that Christopher was Bud’s son. She’d had no other option available to her. Even if Adam had somehow achieved the impossible and been able to return to Virginia right after Bud’s funeral, would either of them have been able to admit to Bill and Kitty that Christopher was Adam’s child? It was doubtful. Very doubtful.
“I’m going back to my family,” Jenna had said, right before beating a hasty retreat down the street. And although she might not have been conscious of it, to Adam the underlying meaning was clear. She had a family that did not include him. The pain of that knowledge cut him deep, and although he groped for comfort, he could find none.
The next morning, he was up early. It was Sunday, which meant Bill and Kitty would be urging him to accompany them to church. He knew he wasn’t up for that, but he decided to make himself useful by starting breakfast.
The smell of bacon and coffee soon brought the other inhabitants of the house down to the kitchen. Christopher was a delight in his cotton pajamas, hair sticking up in all directions. The little boy’s presence cast a cheerful, normalizing glow over their morning meal.
Kitty allowed Adam to beg off from church with a minimum of fussing, especially when he promised to return for a longer visit in the next couple of weeks. “And see if you can bring that young lady to visit sometime soon,” she added. “I want to get a good look at her.”
Inwardly he winced, but he gave her his best smile and said he’d see what he could do. Kitty, like Jenna, was trying to hold her precious world together with both hands, and the piece labeled “Adam” had been slipping out of place for years.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN FRANK ARRIVED AT THE ANACOSTIA Naval Station early on Monday morning, the three phones on his desk were all ringing at once. He set his briefcase carefully on the floor and seated himself in his chair, prepared to start his day.
The phone at the far left usually carried the most important calls, so he answered that one first. That caller turned out to be a general, who spit out a question, waited in tense silence as Frank answered, then hung up with the barest acknowledgement. The next phone call was from an aide to a different general, and the third phone call came from a colonel. Frank answered all their questions as accurately as he could. When he finally hung up the third phone, silence reigned in the small office.
On Monday mornings, Frank liked to be at work by six. And since his secretary didn’t get in until eight, it wasn’t unusual for him to walk into a storm of ringing telephones. It could be unsettling, to say the least. Especially since these phone calls always seemed to carry the insinuation that disaster was around every corner.
Of course, the world was a frightening place just then, so maybe the insinuation wasn’t far from the truth. The constant Soviet threat loomed in the hearts and minds of the people, especially those charged with the defense of this great country. After the hellish nightmare of World War II, Frank thought that American citizens deserved a little peace and quiet. But such was apparently not the natural way of Man.
Frank swiveled his chair so he could gaze out the windows. From his desk, he could see the Potomac River, all the way across to the George Washington Parkway. He drummed his fingers on the desk. His co-workers all thought that he’d been lucky as hell to get this particular office, but luck had nothing to do with it. The person who assigned offices was a friend of his, and Frank hadn’t been ashamed to use a little bit of leverage to get what he’d wanted.
“Give me a place to put my lever, and I shall move the world.” Archimedes hadn’t known how right he’d been when he’d said those words. Frank had learned about leverage from an early age. It had, in fact, been what enabled him to marry his late wife Evelyn.
They’d met in college. She was a strikingly handsome and brilliant woman, and although she had a reputation for being moody, her cup had overflowed with beaus. Frank had taken one look and known that they belonged together.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that her father was Dr. Arthur Kidd, a psychoanalyst of some renown who occasionally taught at the university. Frank had cultivated Dr. Kidd’s acquaintance, then had gone after Evelyn. Having her father’s approval had given him the edge over her other would-be suitors. It was an old tactic, but that didn’t make it any less effective. Leverage.
Not long after he and Evelyn had married, the country went to war, and life as they knew it changed forever. Frank had been secretly relieved when an old injury had kept him from enlisting in the service. He was no coward, but he didn’t relish the idea of dying on a battlefield. He’d felt that his destiny lay elsewhere, and it turned out that he was right, as usual. In 1942, government recruiters had swept through every university in the country, looking for brainpower to help with a top-secret project. Although no one had said the words out loud, Frank had instinctively realized that the project must’ve involved nuclear power. He had leapt at the chance to be on the cutting edge of this new science.
So before they knew it, Frank and Evelyn had found themse
lves relocated to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Previously a sleepy little hamlet consisting mostly of farms, Oak Ridge had been co-opted by the government and turned into a harried community of roughly 75,000 souls. And although the rest of the populace had been unaware of it, on November 4, 1943, the very first nuclear reactor went active, right in their little town.
Evelyn had committed suicide the following week. The note she left behind had revealed little except a quote from Shakespeare: “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, as watchman to my heart.” It was a line uttered by the tragic Ophelia in Hamlet. Her body had washed up on shore a few days later. She had drowned, as Ophelia had drowned.
Frank had not known that he was capable of such anguish. He had thrown himself into his work, grateful for the long hours. After the war, he’d been offered this job in DC. It was a good position, well-paid and highly respected. He’d taken the post and reconciled himself to the fact that he would be a bachelor for the rest of his days. But when he met Jenna, he realized that he had been wrong. At least about that.
He heard the outer door to his office open and close again. His secretary must have arrived, which meant that it was already eight o’clock. Where had the morning gone?
The intercom on his desk buzzed, and Darla’s voice came fuzzily into the room. “Good morning, Dr. Malloy. Would you like your coffee now?”
Frank reached out and depressed the lever. “Yes, thank you.” He let go, then immediately pressed it again. “How’s your mother doing, Darla?”
“Oh, she’s much better, sir. Thank you so much for your help.”
“Of course, of course.” It embarrassed Frank to be thanked, although it gratified him to know he had done something worthy of thanking. He could picture Darla chattering about him to the other secretaries: “Imagine a big, important doctor like that taking an interest in an old colored woman like my mother! Why, he sent his own physician over to check on her last week! Men like that don’t come around too often….”
No, they don’t. And more’s the pity.
His father-in-law had been just such a man, and it was probably his influence that had caused Frank to take such an interest. As Dr. Kidd once said, “It’s the responsibility of the intellectually-advantaged to take care of those who are, through no fault of their own, inferior.”
Frank smiled to himself as he thought of how Jenna would bristle at the word “inferior.” In her eyes, all people were equals, an idealistic notion that had been planted by her father and nourished by years of travel amongst all sorts of common folk.
But human beings were not all equal, and that was the truth. From an early age, Frank had realized that he was smarter than most people. He wasn’t particularly proud of this fact, any more than he was proud of his eye color or shoe size. He simply saw it as an elementary truth, something that had neither to be insisted upon nor questioned.
Darla bustled in with his coffee, her ebony face calm and cheerful. She pulled out her steno pad, and they went over the schedule for the day. As she was about to bustle out again, she cast an appraising eye over him and ventured to ask, “Are you all right, Doctor? You look a bit peaked this morning, if you don’t mind my saying.”
He smiled wanly. Thinking about Evelyn always sapped his strength. “I’m fine, Darla. Probably just working too hard.”
She nodded. “I have no doubt about that. Can I do anything for you?”
“No, but thank you.” He watched as she quietly departed the room. Darla was a treasure, and Frank knew it. He wouldn’t trade her for all the world.
When he was alone again, he tried to get some work done, shuffling papers, filling out forms, doing random calculations. But his thoughts kept drifting, and eventually he gave up trying to work. He drained his coffee cup and crossed the room to stand at the windows. Outside, the sun shone. The river, a soothing ribbon of gray, glimmered in the mid-morning light. He put a hand against the cool pane of glass, and he sighed.
Jenna hadn’t liked it when he brought up the subject of marriage the other night. He had seen the shock on her face and the momentary shimmer of distaste. Her reaction had hurt him, but only for a little while.
After thinking it over, he realized that he’d acted rather like an oaf, blurting it out like that.
“Well then, we should just get married,” he’d said, with all the passion of a wet mop. What was he thinking? At least when he had proposed to her, he had done it the right way: candlelight and roses, soft music in the background. With a woman like Jenna, it was sometimes difficult to know what note to strike, and obviously he’d struck the wrong one the other night. They’d barely spoken since.
If only she knew how he felt about her. She held an almost unmanageable fascination for him. When he had told her that she was uncivilized, he had meant that she was like him: cold and strong, cutting to the quick of things, unafraid to slice to the bone. She was magnificent. And she was perfect for him.
When they married, Frank intended to put her up on a pedestal and keep her there, always. She deserved no less than complete and utter adoration.
Of course, judging from recent events, she might be feeling a little less enthusiastic about the idea of marriage. But that was all right. Frank was infinitely patient, and eternally unrelenting. Jenna belonged with him — belonged to him, even. And one day in the not-too-distant future, they would be man and wife.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JENNA HAD NEVER REALLY BELIEVED IN fairy tale endings.
When she was a child, her father had taken her to see a matinée of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It had been the first time Lucien had taken her to the movies. As an adult, she could never remember which city they were living in at that time, but she remembered everything else about the afternoon clearly. She remembered the soaring ceilings and beveled mirrors in the theater lobby, the red seats and carpeting in the auditorium. Lucien bought the two of them a bag of caramels, which were usually forbidden to her because they were bad for her teeth, and they sat together in the front row of the balcony.
For the occasion, Jenna had worn her new velvet dress, the one that so nicely brought out the bluish tones in her big gray eyes. Her black hair had been brushed to gleaming, and her stockings had been pure white. And Lucien did not wear his uniform that day, but instead wore a suit and tie like all the other fathers. His tall frame and handsome, ascetic face had drawn many admiring glances from women they passed, both young and old.
The colors on the movie screen had been like something out of a dream. Jenna had laughed at the dwarfs, sighed at Snow White, and covered her eyes when the beautiful queen turned herself into an ugly old witch. She had enjoyed herself up to the end, the very end, when the prince kissed Snow White and brought her back to life.
On the drive back to base, her father had asked her seriously what she thought of the movie. His questions to her were always serious, and he would listen to her answers as if she were an adult with opinions valuable enough to matter.
“Did you like it?” he’d asked.
She’d considered carefully before answering, not wanting to hurt his feelings. Finally she’d confessed that she didn’t like the end, because it wasn’t true that you could kiss someone and bring them back to life.
In reply, Lucien had pointed out that it wasn’t true you could talk to a magic mirror, either, or that someone could make a magic apple which would put you to sleep.
But Jenna was not to be put off so easily. She was precocious, and her natural instinct was to argue. “That’s true. However people do talk to themselves when they look in the mirror, and you can put poison on an apple. So those parts aren’t really implausible.”
“But the part with the prince was ‘implausible’?” her father had asked. When she’d nodded he’d added, “It’s just make-believe, Jenna.”
She’d shaken her head and said flatly, “It could never happen. They shouldn’t try to make us believe that impossible things can happ
en.”
If her father had been an ordinary parent, he probably would have read her the riot act for being so outspoken to an elder. But nothing about her father had ever been ordinary. He had quietly accepted what she said, then asked her about schoolwork.
But before he’d turned his face back to the road, Lucien had looked her full in the eyes. And in that instant Jenna had seen two things. The first was approval, which Jenna knew came because he liked to hear her opinions, especially when they differed from what other people thought. And the second was sadness, which she had attributed to the fact that her mother had died when Jenna was a baby, and her father had not been able to kiss her back to life.
It didn’t occur to Jenna until years later that maybe the sadness had been for her, for the fact that even as a child she couldn’t let go of hard-edged reality long enough to enjoy some make-believe, some magic.
And as she watched her son walking around an art gallery in the early summer of 1956, she wondered if maybe a little magic wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Jenna smiled. Christopher was being a real sport today. He seemed to understand that this trip was important to his mother, so he was behaving as best he could. He carried himself with great dignity, held her hand politely, and looked at all the pictures on the wall as if he were seriously pondering the artists’ meaning and choice of colors.
What a little man he was, this child of hers. If only she could tell him how he lit up her life, transformed her world from a dark, cramped, lonely place to an expansive universe filled with light. She wished that Lucien could have lived long enough to meet his grandson. The two of them would have been great pals in their own way.
