by Dianne Dixon
“I need the truth. I don’t believe you’ve never thought about wanting forgiveness, wanting to atone for what you did. You couldn’t be human and not have. I need to know every single thing you’ve ever thought about doing that would help make it right, that would help get your soul clean. And I don’t want to hear about how fifteen lousy years just washed everything away, like it never happened.”
And Hayden hisses: “If I’d stayed in for twenty years. For fifty. If I’d sliced my own throat with a razor and bled to death”—Hayden’s face is so close to Micah’s that Micah can feel flecks of Hayden’s spit landing on her cheek—“would it make things even? Would it change what happened that night?”
Micah is uncertain of the answer to Hayden’s question. And unable to let go of her own guilt. Her voice is shaking as she says: “Because of things we did, someone died.”
“Yeah. And me and two other people went to prison for it. One of them tried to hang himself in his cell. And none of it makes a bit of difference—’cause that poor, innocent soul is still dead. There’s nothin’ anybody can do about that. So I don’t know what you want from me.”
What I wanted, Micah is thinking, was to hear that with the right penance I could finally be absolved for my part in what happened that night. But what you’re showing me is that being punished didn’t make you less guilty, didn’t make you feel forgiven…it just made you hard, and old, and fat…
Now, without intending to, Micah speaks the final bit of her thought aloud. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s nothing I could do on this earth that would balance the scales. Maybe the death-penalty people are telling the truth. Maybe the only real way to pay for one life is with another.”
Hayden’s fingertips are surprisingly cool and delicate as they come to rest on either side of Micah’s face, and Hayden tells her: “I don’t know what idiot idea you’re wrestlin’ with right now. I got no interest in it. But I’m guessin’ you haven’t changed a bit. You’re still the spoiled rich girl who thinks she’s the star of the play when the truth is that everybody drawin’ breath is in the same play and who’s starrin’ in it depends on what day it is and who’s tellin’ the story. You ain’t the center of the universe. You ain’t got the power to carve the future or erase the past. All you got is today, and all you can do is try to do as good as you can till the sun goes down. Then tomorrow get up and try and do a little better. What you did, you did—and you’re stuck with it. You dyin’ isn’t gonna solve anything. All it’s gonna do is let you off the hook for shit you didn’t have the time—or the balls—to stick around and face up to.”
Micah jerks free of Hayden’s grasp; her mind is filling with images of tumors and scalpels and mutilation. “You have no right to talk to me like that. You don’t know what I’m facing—what I’m going through.”
Hayden slams the lid shut on the battered washer and gives Micah a withering stare. “I’m guessin’ you’ve led one fucked-up life and I’m bettin’ you’re the one who keeps fucking it up ’cause you’re always lookin’ for stuff that doesn’t exist, like happiness and forgiveness. Know how I know? ’Cause I’m cool, even after doin’ time in prison. I’m content. Right here. In this dump. Helpin’ people get their clothes clean. Married to a guy you wouldn’t wipe your shoes on.”
Hayden looks in the direction of the dryers, and the little man in the faded brown pants and the wide red belt. Then she adds: “But you’re miserable. Even after walkin’ away scot-free from what happened. You’re miserable and you probably live in a penthouse. You’re miserable ’cause you’re wasting your life eatin’ your guts out over all the stuff you shouldn’t have done, and can’t change, and don’t have, and never got—”
Micah has stopped listening. She’s already walking away. Escaping to the parking lot and the taxi that’s waiting there.
Hayden is calling after her, warning her: “Your problem isn’t with that poor creature who died. Your problem is with somebody else and you know it.”
AnnaLee
Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
The problem of Bella’s fever has been washed away with a cool bath, her fretfulness soothed with a lullaby. AnnaLee is at rest. Everything is quiet. The linen window-shades in the nursery have been drawn against the late afternoon sun. And the diffused light is making the candy-striped toddler bed, and the shelves of colorful toys, and the enormous stuffed giraffe that’s propped in the corner look like illustrations in a children’s book.
AnnaLee, with Bella cradled in her arms, is in a yellow rocking chair. And while she is watching her little girl sleep, she’s experiencing a swell of emotion that’s overwhelming. A love that’s powerful, and infinitely gentle.
It is a love that has consumed AnnaLee since the moment of Bella’s birth. The moment in which AnnaLee’s soul fluttered, and her heart lifted away. As if it was going from her own body into her child’s. The sensation was like being turned inside-out. Suddenly having her nerves and their intricately braided pathways netted on the surface of her skin. Attuned to a single mission, to keeping her baby safe.
The words AnnaLee was whispering to Bella in that incredible moment while Bella was being born are the ones AnnaLee is whispering now: “No matter how big you grow, my darling, or how old you get, or how far away from me you travel, I’ll always be with you. I will always love you, and protect you. Always and forev—”
A shadow, from the doorway, has shot across the nursery floor. Ominous and quick.
Before AnnaLee can lift her gaze from her sleeping child, the shadow has vanished. Leaving in its wake the faint smell of cloves. And the malevolent stomp of thick-soled boots rapidly moving away. Toward the far end of the hall.
AnnaLee has been reminded. Things are different now.
Now, during the day, even when Jack is gone and at work, AnnaLee no longer has her house to herself.
***
A relentless thumping sound—muffled and hellish—has begun in the few minutes that have elapsed since AnnaLee tucked Bella into bed and began walking toward the other end of the hall.
The door to the bedroom that AnnaLee is approaching is closed. A hand-lettered sign is taped to its front—a sheet of paper ripped from a notebook and scrawled with fat red letters.
You’re not welcome here. Stay out. This is my realm. I am the one and only Persephone!! It’s pronounced Per-sef-o-nee. Don’t dare say it wrong!
As AnnaLee is opening the door, a black combat boot is flying through the air. Banging into the wall just above her shoulder. Leaving an ugly scuff on the apple-green paint.
Near the window, a purple-haired teenager is sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed—a sketchbook in her lap and a piece of artist’s charcoal in her hand. She’s stubbing out a clove cigarette: defiantly wearing nothing but skimpy, tiger-stripe panties and a pair of large headphones. The headphones are attached to an oversized boombox. Its volume turned up so loud that the thump of heavy metal is shaking the floorboards. Not only in the room AnnaLee is in, but throughout the house.
This bedroom was once AnnaLee’s girlhood sanctuary. And up until three weeks ago, it was pristine in its simple sunlit beauty. Now, the walls are plastered with images of skulls and blood and destruction. The floor is littered with piles of discarded clothes and magazines. And the air is rank with the smell of forgotten tuna sandwiches and half-eaten pizzas.
The desecration, and the sullen teenager who is creating it, are infuriating AnnaLee. But most of all, she’s angry at Jack. For not having had the strength to keep his niece—this obnoxious girl—from coming here in the first place.
AnnaLee is pounding on the boombox, fumbling to find the power button.
And the purple-haired girl is leaning back against the headboard. Nibbling from a bag of Oreos.
And laughing.
Until AnnaLee manages to slam the boombox into silence.
Then the girl is roaring up off the bed in a frenzy. Tossing the bag of cookies aside and clutching at AnnaLee. Dragging her toward the
door, shouting: “What’s your problem? Can’t you read?”
For a split second AnnaLee’s outrage is as uncontrolled and furious as the girl’s. AnnaLee is on the verge of slapping her.
But the girl is oblivious. Pointing to the sign on the door. Shoving her face toward AnnaLee’s and screaming: “This is my realm and I am Persephone!”
The girl’s voice is reedy. Unsteady. Pitifully childish. She’s less than an inch away from AnnaLee and underneath the fragrance of cloves AnnaLee can smell the scent of bubble gum, and baby powder. She can see injury, and indescribable loneliness, in the girl’s eyes.
AnnaLee is overwhelmed by an urge to hug her. To console and mother her. But the girl is shoving AnnaLee aside and heading back into the room.
“Just so we’re straight on this,” she’s informing AnnaLee, “I think being here sucks.”
“I know—”
“Wrong answer!” The girl has cut AnnaLee off and is shouting at the top of her lungs. “You don’t know how I feel. You don’t know anything about me. Nobody does. Why should they? Everywhere I go I’m just passing through, and that suits me fine.”
She retreats to the bed and sits angrily on its edge. “Now get out!”
AnnaLee’s interest has moved to the sign that’s taped to the door. “Why Persephone?” she asks.
“Because I like her,” the girl snarls. Then, with a haughty kind of malice, she adds: “Persephone is Queen of the Underworld.”
“Did you know she was also the goddess of innocence?”
The girl’s face registers a momentary uncertainty before she mutters: “That’s a load of crap.”
“No, it’s true. Look it up.”
AnnaLee is removing the sign from the door, slowly, not wanting to scar the paint. As she’s disposing of the bits of tape and folding the sign into a neat square, she’s asking the girl: “Is that what you’d like to be called…while you’re here this summer…Persephone?”
At first the girl is surprised. Then skeptical. “You’d never do that.”
In the brief standoff that’s blossomed between them, AnnaLee sees the hostility in the girl’s eyes being nudged aside by a trace of what looks like wistfulness, or perhaps a guarded kind of hope.
And AnnaLee says: “I tell you what. No more clove cigarettes…no more music so loud it shakes the walls…and you can be Persephone. All summer long.”
“That’s what you’ll call me? You promise? Really?”
“Really.”
The girl ponders this for several seconds, with the faintest suggestion of a smile. Then the smile vanishes.
The girl looks down. Begins methodically picking cookie crumbs out of her navel—flicking them aside, one by one—and muttering: “That stuff you were telling your kid…that stuff about how much you love her. I heard everything you said.”
When the girl looks up her expression is cold. Vacant. “It made me hate you. And her.”
A chill is spiraling through AnnaLee. A shiver of worry about what strangeness this summer could bring.
Livvi
Flintridge, California ~ 2012
“I’m not comfortable with this. It’s too isolated. No one’s here.” David is in his car. At the bottom of a steep, tree-lined driveway. He’s leaning out of the driver’s-side window. Calling to Livvi, asking: “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait with you?”
“I’m fine, go!” The words come out sounding clipped and rude—not the way Livvi intended them to.
She’s at the top of the driveway, with a sprawling, shade-dappled house looming at her back, and she’s nervous.
David is putting the car into reverse then immediately bringing it to a stop, leaning out the window again. There is unguarded sweetness in his voice as he’s telling her: “I hate to leave you.”
Livvi isn’t really paying attention to what David is saying or how he’s saying it; she’s too distracted. She’s giving him a wave she hopes will look cheery. She sincerely appreciates that David, after driving her to the meeting in Culver City this morning, was kind enough to bring her all the way out here into the hills northwest of Pasadena—to this leafy, affluent town called Flintridge. But now she desperately wants him to go away.
Until David is out of sight, until Livvi is sure she’s alone, she won’t be able to do what she has come here to do.
She won’t have the nerve to climb the wide flagstone steps leading to the front door. Won’t have the courage to remove the spare key from its hiding place behind the potted ficus tree. And slip into Andrew’s empty house. Like a thief.
It seems to take David an eternity to back out of the driveway and disappear from view. When he finally does—Livvi is suddenly afraid.
The quiet that’s surrounding the house feels menacing. And it’s adding to Livvi’s nervousness, her gnawing uncertainty about what, or who, kept Andrew so busy that it took him five hours to answer her call, after the weather vane crashed into her car.
And now doing what she thought she wanted to do, retrieving the hidden key and turning it in the lock on Andrew’s door, is only increasing Livvi’s anxiety. This isn’t who she is. This person who brushed off David, her best friend, without even saying good-bye so she could be left in peace to sneak into her lover’s house. To rummage through his closets and drawers looking for proof that he doesn’t care about her—proof that there’s another woman in his life.
Livvi’s reason for being here is too seedy to even think about. She’s quickly reaching to grab the key out of the lock—intending to close the door, put the key back in its hiding place, and leave. But it’s too late. She’s seeing that the door has already begun to drift open—and her eyes are wide with apprehension.
When she turned the key in the lock she’d forgotten that Andrew’s house has a security system. What if the system’s armed?
Livvi doesn’t know the code. She has only been here a couple of times, and never without Andrew.
Tension-filled seconds are ticking by. Leaving Livvi afraid to move, or breathe. Leaving her waiting for the blare of the alarm and the eventual wail of police sirens.
Miraculously. The stillness remains unbroken.
Without thinking, Livvi ducks inside the house. It’s sleek and flat-roofed. With concrete floors and glass walls. Built on the rise of a hill, at the center of at least an acre of land. Tucked into a glade of trees and ferns. A place that’s quiet and remote.
Livvi closes the door. Locking it and leaning against it. Sighing with relief. And waiting. For her heart to stop pounding.
In the few moments that it takes Livvi to catch her breath, the house remains completely still. Then the stillness is abruptly broken by three staccato notes of birdsong. Coming from somewhere outside. Rapid and shrill, like a warning. Like the sound of danger.
And Livvi is also hearing a second, more muffled noise—one that sounds like a car pulling into the driveway. Immediately she’s convinced that the car is Andrew’s, and she’s panicked that he’s home so early. The plan was for him to meet her here at noon—and it’s only ten-thirty in the morning.
Livvi is glancing around Andrew’s stylish living room. At the cobalt-blue sofa. The low-to-the-ground side chairs upholstered in chrome-colored silk. The glass coffee table shaped like a boomerang. And the steel desk that’s as cleanly sculpted as a knife-blade. She’s embarrassed to the point of tears. Even though she has changed her mind about rifling through his house, Livvi feels petty and guilty. She doesn’t want Andrew to know that the reason she came here early was to spy on him.
It’s July, she’s thinking. Last month was the six-month anniversary of the night we met. Maybe I could say I came early and let myself in to surprise him…to fix a celebration lunch and—
Livvi’s train of thought is interrupted—by what she’s seeing in the center of the room. A recent issue of Architectural Digest. Open and facedown on the coffee table—she’s trying to recall if she’s ever seen Andrew reading Architectural Digest. And on the floor, beneath the coff
ee table, is a pair of white athletic socks—almost prissy in how immaculately new they are.
Livvi glances toward the front door and listens. Nothing but silence. No footsteps, no key in the lock. She must have only imagined that the sound she heard was Andrew’s car pulling into the driveway.
She goes to the coffee table and looks down through the glass top, to the carpet below—gazing at those immaculate socks. Are they Andrew’s? Someone else’s? There’s no way to be sure.
The possibility that the miraculous world she has found with Andrew might be coming apart is filling Livvi with a searing combination of grieving and dread—an old, familiar emotion.
When she looks up from the coffee table the first thing she sees is her own reflection, in the living room’s glass wall. She’s as pale as paste, except for the skin right above her cheekbones, which is blotchy red. Her eyes are full of darkness. Every muscle in her body is tight and clenched. She looks like a woman she doesn’t recognize. Someone she doesn’t want to be.
Seeing herself this way is putting a sick, sour taste in Livvi’s mouth. She’s turning toward the kitchen. Needing a drink of water. And wondering if David has gotten onto the freeway yet. Hoping it isn’t too late to have him come back and take her home.
While she’s walking into the open area beyond the living room, where the kitchen is, she’s switching her phone on. The battery is low.
She goes to press David’s number—then doesn’t.
On the kitchen countertop, near the sink, are an oversized coffee cup, a half-eaten muffin, and a crumpled paper napkin. Both the coffee cup and napkin are white. Other than a few drops of coffee at the bottom of its bowl, the cup is clean. But on the napkin, there are thin streaks. Little stains. All of them pinkish-red. The color of lipstick.
Livvi’s pain is instant—a knot in her chest as hard and tight as a baseball. For a minute, it immobilizes her. Then she notices, on the other side of the coffee cup, a small dish filled with strawberries. The knot in her chest eases. And she tells herself, Andrew could have been eating a strawberry, wiping his mouth with the napkin. The red could have come from that.
